THE MARXIST PHILOSOPHY OF LEADERSHIP

Thesis Ior II“? Degree :of M. A. i
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Alan L. Seltzer-

‘1 19160

 

 

 

 

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Michigan State
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THE MARXIST PHILOSOPHY OF LEADERSHIP

by

Alan L. Seltzer

AN ABSTRACT

 

Approved By 6 7%
V

THE MARXIST PHILOSOPHY OF LEADERSHIP

by
Alan L. Seltzer

This thesis investigates the philosOphy of leadership in the writ-
ings of Karl Harx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism can be preperly termed
a political philosophy because it tried to arrive at genuine knowledge
of how man ought to live on the basis of its conception of human
nature. It asserted that capitalism.made man unable to live that Way
because it had stunted his potentialities for intellectual develop-
ment and leadership. Capitalism's requirement that surplus value be
maximized led to a division of labor that provided no possibility for
workers to exercise their intellectual potentialities either on the
job or in their free time. Members of the ruling class were also
stunted, according to the Marxist theory of ideology, in that their
intellectual develOpment stOpped at the notion that existing material
relationships were universally valid.

The Narxist doctrine of working class consciousness changed
during Marx and Engels' lifetime. In its most mature version it sug-
gested not only that the workers must attain full theoretical under-
standing of society before the revolution could occur, but also that
they were capable of doing so. After the revolution and the subse-
quent abolifion of classes, leadership, according to Harx, would be
analagous to the role of conductor of a symphony orchestra. There
would be no difference between individual interests and the common

interest. Both Harx and Engels discussed human inequalities. How-

Alan L. Seltzer 3

ever, Marx ignored the possibility of unequal human capacities for
rationality in positing democratic processes to select leaders.
Engels went further, in suggesting that all men would take part in
community affairs. Narxism suggested that these would involve tech-
nical matters of economic administration only and Engels implied
that competence for these functions would be achieved by all.
Narxism's philOSOphy of leadership can be sharply contrasted
with that of classical political philOSOphy deepite an appearance
of certain striking similarities. However, the contrast is not so
sharp as to avoid distortion if Harx and Engels are termed
HachiavelliAns as they have been by certain classical scholars.
While Machiavelli's philOSOphy dismissed morality as conventional,
Narxism had clearly eXpressed moral concepts for men under Communism
that were held not to be conventional. Marxism is best criticized

by trying to show that its philosophy of human nature and leadership

is based on faulty premises.

THE MARXIST PHILOSOPHY OF LEADERSHIP

by

Alan L. Seltzer

A THESIS

Submitted to the College of Business and Public Service
Michigan State University of Agriculture and
Applied Science in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Political Science
1960

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

‘While the Mai. thesis is but a tentative beginning in one's
intellectual develOpment it is precisely for this reason that a.
graduate student is particularly indebted to his professors for
their kind assistance, in every case beyond the normally expected
requirements of their positions and usually at the expense of their
own scholarly activities or leisure time. Dr. Alfred G. Meyer in-
troduced me to the political aSpects of Marxism and during my year
and a half at Michigan State University was constantly in close touch
with my studies as my major professor and Chairman of my Thesis Comp
mittee. I am deeply grateful, not only for his professional atten-
tion, but also for his personal friendship and advice during my
transition from.military to academic life. Professor Robert Horwitz
first awakened my interest in the fundamental problems of political
philosophy through his courses in classic and modern natural right
and was kind enough to read the entire manuscript and contribute to
its improvement deSpite his absence in Hawaii as a visiting profes-
sor. Dr. Horwitz's outstanding teaching and advice has been reSponsi-
ble more than any other factor for the direction of my present aca-
demic pursuits. I am also grateful to Dr. John Henderson of the
Michigan State economics department for introducing me to the essenp
tials of Marxist economic theory and serving on my committee and to
Dr. Robert G. Scigliano, who was kind enough to join the committee
on short notice and whose detailed reading of the manuscript pro-

vided immeasurable help. Without the financial and moral support

 

 

 

 

 

iii

of my'parents, my graduate program could not have been undertaken.

I am also grateful to the Michigan State political science depart-
ment and its chairman, Dr. Joseph LaPalombara, for providing a grad-
uate assistantship during the final term.of my MLA. program. my
dear friend, Mrs. Annette Friedman, provided the expert typing of

the final copies, for which I am most thankful.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page
“monsoon-mums...”................... ii
I. INTRODUCTION: POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND Iliii‘iISI-i . . . . . . 1
II. THEDIVISIONOFLABOR...................l7
III. wormus C ass conscmiszrsss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
IV. mm 1m in ORCIEJSTPA comecrom. . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
v. COIICLZTSION: lumen AND THE CLASSICS . . . . . . . . . . . 70

BIBLIOGRAPI‘ZY:o.ooooooooooooooooooooooo81

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION: POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND MARXISM

The themes of differences in natural talent, in ability to
rule, in intelligence, are recurrent ones in social thought. So
important were these differences to the classical political phil-
oSOphers that they envisioned the best regime as the absolute rule
of the wise. ‘Rousseau's social contract society included the con-
cept of the legislator who, standing outside of the society as a
wise adviser, drew up the laws. In the Uhited States we have the
notions of representative democracy and universal suffrage, resting
on the belief that the voter is rational enough to choose his rep-
resentatives. In the Soviet Union the Communist Party is defined
as the conscious vanguard of the working peOple, consisting of the
latter's "finest elements" and therefore best able to provide lead-
ership in the society, so that the dictatorship of the proletariat
becomes in essence, "the dictatorship of its vanguard, the dictator-

ship of its Party."1

The ideological struggle of our day is at least partly eXpressed
through Opposing theories of leadership. Further removed from the
practical political world, political philOSOphies ever since class-
ical antiquity have found it necessary to reconcile in some fashion

the requirements for wisdom and for consent.

—_

1 Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism and On The Problems q; I
Leninism, (combined, 1 vol.) Moscow, 1950, Foreign Languages Publish! 4
lug House, pp. 149, 198.

In Chapters II through IV we shall investigate the Marxist po-
sition with respect to the capacities of different individuals to
exercise leadership. We shall eXamine the question of working class
consciousness, and the ideas of Marx and Engels about the intellect-
ual gifts of the laboring man. We shall try to demonstrate that
while Marxisml suggested that the proletarian's intellectual facul-
ties suffered retarded development in capitalist society, it also
suggested that peeple were unequally'endowed with the skills and inv
telligence required to exercise leadership. We shall try to learn
what kind of leadership was envisioned by Marx and Engels in their
scattered remarks about the future Communist society. In Chapter V
we shall make some summary remarks that compare, generally, the
Marxist position with that of classical political philOSOphy.

In the present chapter the author shall indicate his under-
standing of what is meant by a political philosophy and shall try to
show in detail that Marxism.can be described as one.

As used in this thesis, the term political philos0phy shall
mean the effort to arrive at genuine knowledge of how man ought to
live. This begins with the attempt to understand the nature of men,
1.6. to appreciate what human behavior is like and what is involved
in the notion of human needs, in all of the complexity that this
study involves. It is the author's position that it is a legiti-

mate undertaking to proceed from the study of human behavior to the

 

1For the purposes of this thesis the term.Marxism.shall be the
shorthand method of denoting, "the writings of Karl Marx and Fried-
rich Engels e l!

discussion of how man ought to live. In my view, this effort does
not simply dissolve into personal biases, value judgments or epin-
ions. Instead, it would appear that genuine knowledge in this area
is possible when based on scientifically obtained information about
man and society. ‘

The social sciences are indispensable to a philOSOphical dis-
cussion. The scientific method of hypothetical deductive observa-
tion is necessary if we would describe man's world accurately and
logically.1 The set of descriptive statements that compose scien-
tific method are systematically related in the precise sense of
being elements of a theory that is able to explain and predict events
by means of a logical procedure. A scientific theory begins with
general statements that whenever and wherever conditions of a type,
‘A, occur, then conditions of a type, E, will obtain.2 ‘A scientific
explanation of an event, E, will refer to its causes, A, in such a
way that our general statements of the relationship between A and E
3

enable us to account for E by the use of the laws of logic.

While science's hypothetical deductive observational method can

 

T This already has an implication for a philOSOphical discus-
sion. The requirement that no statement take on a sacred quality -
that all statements are corrigible and continually susceptible to
test - provides immediate suggestions to political philosOphers
about the kind of ethical code that would be necessary'in a good so-

ciety.

2 But frequently it becomes necessary to add a probability state-
ment, e.g. "conditions of a type, E, will obtain with a probability qf

70$."

3 Whenever A, then E. Yesterday A. Therefore (logically)
yesterday'E.

tell us what human behavior is like, it is not so conceived as to be
able to deduce from the knowledge it provides, ideas about how man
ought to live. Nevertheless, that philosophical quest is nearly'uni-
versal to human beings. Thus understood, political philosophy is
synonymous with the idea of natural.gight'becasue it makes the effort
to know what is good or right for man from an understanding of human
nature.

Marxism can be described as a political philoSOphy because it
not only discussed tht _i_s_, but also M p_ugh_t 33 pg. It is one ap-
proach to the problem of natural £2823 because it deduced from its
understanding of human nature the outline of the way men ought to
live. To understand its approach it is useful to provide a brief
sketch of the two natural right phiIOSOphies that dominated political
thought prior to MarXism. These were the classical position,
Socratic-Platonic or Aristotelian, and in sharp contrast, the modern
natural right teaching that originated with Hobbes and was later
modified by Locke and Rosseau.

The political thought of the latter group began with a concept
of man derived from Machiavelli's approach to politics, namely, that
men were selfish by nature and had to be compelled to be social. They
could be so compelled because of the malleability of human nature;
the passion for glory could induce princes to compel other men to live
socially and therefore to begin to behave according to moral concep-
tions. But Machiavelli taught that this morality was derived from.a
concern with what was good for a given principality; morality was de-

fined in terms of the common good rather than the common good being

defined in terms of morality. That is what we mean when we say that
he taught that all morality was conventional. Hobbes' concern was

to mitigate this teaching by introducing the notion of the state of
nature which was held to be man's natural state, making his nature
non-social or selfish. Natural right involved making it possible

for man to fulfill his selfish urges, particularly the need for self-
preservation. Governments were established to protect men from
violent death. Consequently, Hobbes' teaching doés not posit the
state of nature as perfect. It was Rousseau who believed that man
was perfect in the state of nature and whose political philosOphy
included the idea of a society that would approximate as closely as
possible man's natural and non-social state. Rousseau believed that
free men, having realized that the state of nature contained obstacles
that were too great to overcome and that the human race would perish
unless it changed its manner of existence, voluntarily put themselves
into the hands of the general will, an association "which will de-
fend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of
each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all,

may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before."1

Long before this conception of man's natural freedom and there-
fore natural right, classical political philosophy had an understand-
ing of man that spoke not of his rights but of his duties, not of the

origins of man but of his potentialities. "What each thing is when

1 Social Contract, Book I, Chapter 6.

fully developed, we call its nature," said Aristotle.1 The individ-
ual, if by accident he were to be found in isolation, would be like
a beast because he would have no opportunity to deve10p human Vir-
tues. Hence man is by nature social:

He is so constituted that he cannot live, or live well,
except by living with others; since it is reason or
Speech that distinguishes him from the other animals,
and Speech is communication, man is social in a more
radical sense than any other social animal: humanity
itself is sociality. Man refers himself to others, or
rather he is referred to others, in every human act,
regardless of whether that act is "social" or "anti-
social." His sociality does not proceed, then, from a
calculation of the pleasures which he expects from.as-
sociation, but he derives pleasure from association
because he is by nature social. Love, affection,
friendship, pity, are as natural to him as concern with
his own good. It is man's natural sociality that is
the basis of natural right in the narrow or strict
sense of right. Because man is by nature social, the
perfection of his nature includes the social virtue

par Excellence, Justice; justice and right are natur-
a1.

Classical political philosOphy recognized that most.men were
motivated to a considerable degree by selfish, material interests,
but conceived of the full development of virtue as most apprOpriate
to man's potentialities as a social being.

Harxism was a departure from.both of the approaches to natural
right that have been described. It contained a teleological concep-
tion of human nature because it discussed the full development of
man's potentialities and posited a social organization that would
make possible that sort of human deveIOpment. But unlike Aristotle,

 

I Politics, 1252b.

2 Leo Strauss, Natnggl Right and History, Chicago, 1953, uni-
versity of Chicago Press, p. 129.

 

whose teleology asserted that these potentialities could be actual-
ized in a few men who had become habituated to a life according to
principles of justice, MaIXism suggested that they could be actual-
ized in all men as the culmination of a historical process. Let us
now go into more detail and examine, step by step, the philosOphical
presuppositions that have just been indicated.

In one of the early manuscripts after Marx adapted the material-
ist approach, he declared that "the individual is _t_l_l_e_ M pm."
He could not conceive of 22g; man, i.e. man truly living according to
his nature, without conceiving of his sociality. Even when man en-
gaged in activity which could seldom be performed "in direct commun-
ity with others" he was social because he "was active as a mans"

Not only is the material of my own activity given to me
as a social product (as is even the language in which i
the thinker is active): my 233 existence lg social activ-
ity, and therefore that which I make of myself, I make

of myself for society and with the consciousness of myh
self as a social being. 1

Narx and Engels asserted that "only in community with others has
each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions;
only in the community, therefore, is personal freedompossible."2
That is:

...the senses of the social man are gthgg senses than those

of the non-social man. Only through the objectively'un-
folded richness of man's essential being is the richness

 

 

1 Economic and Philosophic Rhnuscripts of 18h4 (hereinafter re-
ferred to as Economic and Philosophic manuscripts), Moscow, 1959,
Foreign Languages Publishing House, p. 104, emphasis in original.

2 Marx and Engels, The German Ideology (Parts I and III), New
York, 1947, International Publishers, p. 71.

of subjective human sensibility (a musical ear, an eye
for beauty of form.- in short, senses capable of human
gratifications, senses confirming themselves as essen-
tial powers ofIEQg) either cultivated or brought into
being. 1

.Although the Marxist understanding of man suggested that he
could not fulfill all of his potentialities except as a social being,
Marx and Engels also declared that he could become a social being
only as the result of the history of material development. Their
theory of historical materialism.made use of the notion of a state of
nature in which man was non-social and akin to the beasts or to the
lowest savages.2 It was the historical process that gave rise to fully
deve10ped men, to men as social animals. According to Engels:

The normal existence of animals is given by the con-
ditions in which they live and to which they adapt them,
selves - those of man, as soon as he differentiates himp
self from the animal in the narrower sense, have as yet
never been present, and are only to be elaborated by the
ensuing historical develOpment. Man is the sole animal

capable of working his way out of the merely animal state
- his normal state is one apprOpriate to his conscious-

It was only with society that we mark "the appearance of fullyafledged

man."A Once men began to live in society they became capable of
achieving higher and higher aims but heretofore each such victory had

taken its revenge on us because of "unforseen effects which only too

 

 

1 Economic and Philosoghic manuscripts, p. 108, emphasis in
original.

2 Engels, Qiglectics of Nature, New York, 1940, International
Publishers, Chapter 9.

3 Ibid, p. 187, emphasis in original.

4 Ibid, p. 285.

1

often cancel the first." Engels added that, "The first men who

separated themselves from the animal kingdom were in all essentials
as unfree as the animals themselves, but each step forward in civil—
ization was a step towards freedom."2 Finally, after a whole pre-
history of economic development ending with conscious organization
of social production on a planned basis,

man finally cuts himself off from the animal world,
leaves the conditions of animal existence behind him
and enters conditions which are really human...It is
only from this point that men, with full conscious-
ness, will fashion their own history....It is human-
ity's leap from the realm of necessity into the realm
of freedom.3

 

1 Ibid., p. 285, 292.

2 Engels, Herr Eugen Duhringis Revolution in Science, (herein-
after referred to as AntiADuhrigg), London, 1934, Lawrence and wish-
hart Ltdo, p. 1290

3 Ibid., pp. 311-312. This passage and others like it, some of
which are cited herein, suggests that'Vernon'Venable misinterpreted
Marxism.in asserting that Marx and Engels viewed human nature solely
as a process of continuous change. While Marxist historical material-
ism stressed steady change in human behavior, it also indicated that
history was moving toward a time when man would no longer be troubled
by the economic problem - thus, a time when the full potentialities
of human nature could assert themselves. This thesis cannot hope to
achieve the breadth of scholarship represented by Venable's Human
Nature: The Marxian.View'(New'York, 1946, Alfred A. Knapf Inc.$.
Nevertheless, it would appear generally that the notion of human
nature becomes meaningless if it is made simply synonymous with human
behavior. Marxism did not so identify the two concepts because it
did not deduce Communist man scientifically, but indicated in con-
crete, normative terms what it would mean to be truly human and sub-
sequently tried to ground this normative understanding in a scientific
prediction. In the following passage (p. 26) Venable might be read-
ing into Marxism.his own interpretation:

When we find Narx and Engels Speaking of "truly," "genuine-
ly" and "really" human, we will be concerned with differ-
ent interests and different linguistic intentions. Here
their usage is primarily normative and directive, function-
ing on the one hand in support of their "humanist" ethics,

10

 

and on the other, as an expression of the practical or
"productive" principle which enters into their theory
of human knowledge....But in no case should their
"ethical" references to the human, be understood as in-
tended to qualify either their behaviorism or their re-
Jection of absolute essences. Their interest, after
all, was in directing the change that occurs in men in-
to desirable channels. They employ concepts of the
"genuinely human" to this end, to inSpire men not to
some abstract or absolute ideal, but merely to a fuller
realization of those capacities which, since they see
man actually possessing them in present historical time,
they feel able to incorporate as elements, among others,
in his substantive definition.

The author of this thesis finds the interpretation of the Marxist
view of human nature presented by Solomon Frank Bloom in the intro-
ductory pages of The World of Nations (New York, 1940, Columbia uni-
versity Press) to be.much more cogent. 'Viz:

A theory of human nature is implicit in every social
philosOphy. Anyone who thinks about society at all is
bound to consider the character of its ultimate unit -
man himself. The social philosopher must form a concep—

tion of human potentialities and limitations. He must
distinguish between the inherent and the transitory
traits of man. Men obviously have a good deal in common,
but they have always belonged to groups set apart from
each other by all sorts of distinctions. The philoSOpher
must determine with some precision in what sense mankind
may be regarded as a homogeneous mass and in what reSpects
it may be treated as the sum of many heterogeneous parts.
He must assay the significance and incidence of the
traits that bind and the traits that divide men.

This is especially true of a thinker like Karl Marx,
who not only prOpounded a social theory but strove to be
effective in the practical world as well. He sought to
influence and guide widely variegated groups - more par-
ticularly the lower classes of many countries - toward a
uniform.solution of their economic problems. Marx was a-
ware that the socialist idea must be tested by its im-
plied judgment of human nature. He frequently stopped to
reflect on man, and these reflections, though he never
elaborated them systematically, formed an integral part of
his picture of the world.

At first glance his view of humanity seems quite para-
doxical. He once asserted that history was "nothing but
a continuous transformation of human nature," suggesting
that one could not speak of human nature as such. Yet
he also discussed "human nature in general"...and de-
scribed its fundamental characteristics. His conception
of man was the touchstone of some important social and

But before this took place, man's degradation became extreme
in capitalist society. Marx and Engels characterized the existing
society as one which reduced the worker "to the mere fragment of a
man."1 Man was alienated; he was estranged from his real self be-
cause his labor was unrelated to his essential being. When he
worked, man denied himself, felt unhappy, mortified his body and
ruined his mind. He could not affirm himself, feel content or de-
velop freely his physical and mental energy. His labor was there-

fore forced 1abor, rather than the satisfaction of a need. "It is

 

historical conclusions. A note on Das Kapital yields the key
to this apparent contradiction. Marx was condemning Jeremy Bentham
for the error of "excogitating" the nature of man from a general
principle, in this case the principle of utility. He went on to re-
mark that he who would pass judgment on the human scene must "first
become acquainted with human nature in general, and then with human
nature as modified historically in every age." If this pr0position
applied to Marx as well as to Bentham...then Marx.drew here a cru-
cial distinction. He separated the characteristics of human nature
into two categories, which we may take the liberty of naming "gen-
eric" and "historical." ....The creature that exercises will and
control and has definite potentialities is "generic" man. The
plastic constituents which change with the environment, and hence
with human activities, are the stuff of which "historical" man is
made. It is "historical" and not "generic" man who is subject to
"continuous transformation."....

The concept of "generic" humanity as one and invariant enabled
him to justify his social theory in terms of a set of traits be-
longing to a homogeneous mass. He could condemn as backward so-
cieties which frustrated the noblest traits and potentialities of
"generic" man, and could vindicate socialist society by showing
how it would realize and fulfill them. The complementary concept
of "historical" human nature as plural and changeable made it
possible to eXplain the actual variety of traits in different ages
and places.

1 AntiéDuhring, p. 324.

12

merely a means to satisfy needs external to it."1 Labor, which was
the only connection linking the majority of individuals with the

productive forces and their own existence, had "lost all semblance

2

of self-activity" and came to sustain life by stunting it." In

capitalist society man did not express his social nature. In a
sense, he was made non-social:

Hundreds of thousands of men and women drawn from all
classes and ranks of society pack the streets of London.
Are they not all human beings with the same innate char-
acteristics and potentialities? Are they not all equally
interested in the pursuit of happiness? And do they not
all aim at happiness by following similar methods? Yet
they rush past each other as if they had nothing in com-
mon...The more that Londoners are packed into a tiny
space, the more repulsive and disgraceful becomes the
brutal indifference with which they ignore their neigh-
bors and selfishly concentrate upon their private af-
fairs. We know well enough that this isolation of the
individual -- this narrowaminded egotism —- is every-
where the fundamental principle of modern society. But
nowhere is this selfish egotism so blatantly evident as
in the frantic bustle of the great city. The disinte-
gration of society into individuals, each guided by his
private principles and each pursuing his own aims has
been pushed to its furthest limits in London. Here in-
deed human society has been split into its component
atoms.3

All victories had brought their unforseen effects, but now, Marx
added, society had established the pro-conditions for solving "the
riddle of history." For "Communism.as the positive transcendence

of private prOperty" represented "the real approEriationIQ£IEQQ

“

1 Economic and PhiloSOphic anuscri ts, p. 72.

2 The German Ideolqgl, P. 66.

3 Engels, Conditions of the Working Class in.England in 1845,
New York, 1958, The Macmillan 00., (hereinafter referred to as

Conditions,.,), p. 31.

13

23952 essence by and for man." Communism was therefore,

the complete return or man to himself as a M

(i.e. human) being....This communism, as fully de-

velOped naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully-

deve10ped humanism equals naturalism; it is the

genuine resolution of the conflict between man and

nature and between man and man.1
At this stage self-activity would coincide with material life, "which
correSponds to the development of individuals into complete indi-
viduals and the casting-off of all natural limitations."2

We can now see that Marxism was phiIOSOphic insofar as it

stated preferences about the characteristics of man that ought to
dominate human relations. Its philosophy of human nature led to a
teleological understanding of how man ought to live. But Marxism,
as science, became the most optimistic of philosophies because Marx
and Engels believed that the theory of historical materialism demon-
strated scientifically that man would one day live as their under-
standing of human nature had led them to believe he ought to live.
Only then would the pro-history of mankiné cease and real human
history emerge. While other great philosophical systems, the
Socratic-Platonic for example, spoke of the improbability of actual-
izing their answers to the problem of the good society,3 historical

materialism.is characterized by optimism in that it predicted that

 

I Economic and Philosophic Manuscriptg, p. 102, emphasis in
original.

2 The German Ideology, pp. 67-68.

3 Cf. Plato, Republic, 473, and Strauss, Natural Rigt and
Histo , pp. 138-140.

14

following an inevitable social revolution man would begin to express
his potentialities as a human being.1

The early MarX, taking on Hegelian terminology but giving it
new content, applied the term.philosthy to his own efforts. He en-
visioned philosophy not as an end in itself but as a means. Just
as the criticism of religion ended with the realization that "man is
the highest essence for man, hence with the categoric imperative to
overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned,
despicable essence,"2 so did the criticism of philOSOphy'and with
the realization that while "the philosophers have only interpreted
the world in various ways the point...is to‘ghgpgg it."3 The task
of philosophy was to "unmask self-alienation" and the goal of poli-
tics was to make philOSOphy a reality by going beyond it. PhilosoPhy,
thought of as a means, became the Spiritual weapon of the proletariat
in heralding the emancipation of man by proclaiming "man to be the
highest essence of man." PhilOSOphy was to be abolished, but only

because it was to be made a reality.4

 

1 Cf. Harx, "Speech at the Anniversary of the People's Pa er,"
in Marx and Engels, Selected'Works, Vol. II, New York, undated, In-
ternational Publishers, pp. 427-429.

2 "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,

Introduction," in Harx and Engels, On Religion,.Moscow, 1957, Foreign
Languages Publishing House, pp. 44, 50.

3 Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, No. 11, appendix to The German
Ideolo , p. 199, emphasis in original.

4 "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's PhiIOSOphy of Right,
Introduction," pp. git., pp. 42, 48-50, 57-58.

15

In the ensuing chapters we shall be concerned with that portion
of Marx and Engels' philosophical remarks about the Communist society
of the future that dealt with intelligence and leadership. In this
connection, Marzism.focused on the potentialities of the working man
that were stunted by capitalist society. It not only eXpressed a
preference that these capacities ought to emerge, but also predicted
that inevitably they would emerge. Consequently Marxism.declared
that some men who did not fill positions of leadership in capitalist
society had a capacity to be leaders provided class antagonisms were
eliminated. The problem to be treated was suggested by the follow-
ing remark by Professor Alfred G. Meyer, dealing with Lenin's po-
litical thought:

While it is true that in the main he denied rationality
to the workingman, he did not maintain this attitude unhesi-
tatingly. On the contrary, he more than once allowed himself
to be led astray by an unusually Optimistic appraisal of pro-
letarian consciousness. Lenin was thus torn between t6? judg-
ments about the working class. In tracing the ups and downs
of his estimate of proletarian rationality, we find that his
opinion becomes Optimistic as soon as the masses begin to en-
gage in Spontaneous revolutionary action, following the slo-
gans preached by himself and his associates. Conversely, as
soon as the masses cease to obey the commands or suggestions
of the party, his estimate of their consciousness declines
sharply. Lenin thus was caught in the same dilemma in which
modern democratic theorists find themselves; and in being
one of the first men to voice doubts in working-class con-
sciousness, he is one of the pathbreakers of contemporary
political thought. In theories of democracy the rationality
of the "common man" is as indispensable a premise as the
workers' class-consciousness is in Marxism. Although Lenin's
faith in it was shaken, he never completely abandoned it be-
cause then he would have had to abandon his entire ideology.
Somewhere, at some point, his theories inevitably assume
that workers will acquire consciousness. Similarly, all
ideas of democracy collapse once the faith in the common
man's rationality is abandoned. Yet we are even less sure
of it than was Lenin, whose lack of faith was based only
on political horse sense, whereas ours is intensified by

16

the incontrovertible findings of psychology and an-

thrOpology. Democratic theorists of our day are

therefore as schiZOphrenic with regard to this prob-

lem as the Leninists, and only those who have no

scruples in abandoning democracy as an ideal whole—

heartedly accept all evidence about man's alienation

and project it into the indefinite future. 1

In the following pages we shall see how the workers' class

consciousness did fit into the theory of Marx and Engels.‘ But we
shall see that they too were "schiz0phrenic" although not so ob-
‘viously as was Lenin. With most great social thinkers, Marx and
Engels recognized unequal potentialities among human beings. Never-
theless, while they sometimes alluded to differences among men in
degree of talent or intelligence, we shall see that the doctrine of
working-class consciousness as well as certain notions about par-

ticipation in community affairs suggested that all men could attain

sufficient rationality to fill leadership roles.

 

 

1 Alfred G. beer, Leninism, Cambridge, Mass., 1957, Harvard
University Press, p. 44.

17

CHAPTER II
THE DIVISION OF LABOR

Mbdern industry, indeed, compels society, under the penalty of
death, to replace the detail-worker of today, crippled by life-
long repetition of one and the same trivial Operation, and thus
reduced to the mere fragment of a man, by the fully developed
individual, fit for a variety of labors, ready to face any change
of production, and to whom the different social functions be per-
fonms, are but so many modes of giving free scOpe to his own
natural and acquired powers.
- Karl Marx

We will better understand the Marxist attitude toward the po-
tentialities of the working man both for intellectual deveIOpment
and leadership after we try to eXplicate Marx and.Enge1's attitude
toward the division of labor. -

Marx defined labor power or the capacity for labor as "the ag-
gregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a
human being which he exercises whenever he produces a usedvalue of

1 But this aggregate was exercised in different

any description."
ways, according to Marx, depending upon the society's mode of pro-
duction. When production was for the immediate consumption of the
household by its members or when individuals began to produce com-
modities for exchange, "the individual apprOpriated natural objects
for his livelihood." In this process the labor of the hand was
united with that of the head because "a single man cannot Operate

upon nature without calling his own muscles into play under the con-

*—

1 Ca ital,'Vol. I, Mescow, 1954, Foreign Languages PubliShing
House, p. 137.

 

18

trol of his own brain."l

Rephrasing these remarks in terms of Marx's theory of aliena-
tion, we can see that for labor to take place in the absence of alien-
ation it had to entail the satisfaction of a need for self-activity.
It had to be the means by which the worker freely developed the ag-
gregate of his physical and mental capabilities. Even in.a society
of individual commodity production, the laborer was somewhat self-
estranged because he did not freely engage in what Mhrx and Engels
termed self-activity. Although he exercised his mental capabilities
during the process of production, it was not the free exercise of
those capabilities because Of the effort involved merely to produce
his material life.

"At a very early stage of develOpment of society," the mind
that planned the labor process "was able to have the labor that had
been planned carried out by other hands than its own."2 Marx and
Engels considered this separation of material and mental labor to
have been the decisive point in the history Of the division of labor.3
From this point, "all merit for the swift advance of civilization
Was ascribed to the mind, to the develOpment and activity of the

brain."4 Finally, in capitalist society, self-activity and the pro-

1 Ibid., p. 508.

2 Dialectics of Nature, p. 289.
3 Cf. The German Ideolo , p. 20.

4 Dialectics of Nature, p. 289.

l9

duction of material life diverged to such an extent that "material
life appears as the end, and what produces this material life, labor...
as the means."1 Labor became merely the means to satisfy external
needs, i.e. the need for subsistence.2 "Labor has lost all semblance
of self-activity and only sustains life by stunting it."3

It was because alienation or self-estrangement had been carried
to such an extreme that Marx and Engels reserved their strongest con-
demnation for capitalist society. It was for this reason also that
they investigated the possibility that the capitalist mode of pro-
duction would give way to one in which alienation could be abolished.
Before we examine in some detail their description of the develOpment
of the division of labor in capitalist society we should at least
' sketch the difference that Marxist theory saw between capitalism.and
earlier economic systems.

We will best understand the uniqueness of capitalism to Mar:
by briefly outlining Marxist economic theory. 'Value, in Marxist
theory, was the term used to designate an object as a product of
human labor. Usedvalue designated that an object had utility. An
object could be a use-value without having value, e.g. air, virgin
soil and natural meadows were not the products of human labor. The

terms exchange value was used to designate that an object was pro-

 

 

l‘Ihe German Ideology, p. 66.

2 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, pp. 72-73.

3 The German Ideolo , p. 66.

20

duced not for the immediate utility of its owner but to be exchanged
for other objects. The product of labor possessed useavalue and
value. It became a commodity when it was produced for exchange.
Whenever commodities were exchanged the common attribute that mani-
fested itself in their exchange value was their value, i.e. the
amount of labor socially necessary for their production.1

Commodities became exchangeable by "the mutual desire of their
owners to alienate them."2 In a simple exchange economy some pro-
ducts of labor were not produced for consumption by their owners.
While these had no utility for purposes of consumption, they pos-
sessed utility for purposes of exchange. Once money became used in
an.economy to assist the process of exchange the transaction could
be represented as follows:

Commodity Money -——- Commodity or C -JM -— C

 

The result of such a transaction was that at the end of the process
the producer possessed a commodity equal in value to his original
commodity, but the distinction between the two commodities was that
while the latter possessed useavalue for him, the former possessed
only exchange value.3

In the society represented above we can see that there would
eXist a social division of labor, i.e. the producer's labor was one-

sided while his wants were many sided.4 However, we have not yet

 

1 Capital, Vol. I, pp. 36-40. Cf. also p. 60.
2 Ibid., p. 87.
3 Ibid., p. 105.

4 Ibid., p. 106.

 

 

 

 

21

- introduced any notion of surplus labor. Up to this point, each man
produced commodities but since not all of these had utility for him
he exchanged some of them with other producers for commodities they
had similarly produced. The object of the transaction was a quali-
tative change of use value. Money enabled the transaction to take
place on a more convenient basis for the producers since it permitted
purchases and sales to be split up. Nevertheless, money was not the
object of the transaction, but simply the intermediate form in which
transactions were represented between the time that an object was
sold and another bought.

Marx called that part of the labor process in which the worker
produced a quantity of commodities equal to the value of his own (or
his and his family's) means of subsistence, necessary labor. He then
distinguished a second period of the labor process in which the
laborer no longer created value for himself, i.e. surplus labor.
Surplus labor existed in any society in which there was a class di-
vision between persons who produced means of subsistence and others
who in some way were free from the need for this labor. Such a con-
dition was an attribute not only of capitalism, but also of the slave
and serf societies that preceded it. But in slave and serf societies
useavalue of the product predominated over exchange Value. That is,
surplus-labor was "limited by a given set of wants which may be
greater or less."1 The master or the lord was freed from the need

to labor and his objects of utility were either directly produced by

1 Ibid., p. 235.

22

the slave or serf or were furnished by means of an exchange that
originated with commodities produced by them. The transactions
could still be represented by C-M;-C.

This was not the case under capitalism. The first form of
appearance bf capital was money but the distinction between money
as capital and money in the earlier transaction, Ce-Me-C, was in the
form of circulation. Money as capital circulated in the form M-C--M,
where the capitalist purchased commodities with his money and had
labor performed on them for the purpose of turning out manufactured
articles on the market and through a sale changing the commodity back
again into money. But this'curcuit, Mé-C--M, would have been meaning-
less "if the intention were to exchange by this means two equal sums
of money."1 The reason for the process could not have been due to
any qualitative differences between the original and final "M" but
must have been that a quantitative difference, namely the increase
in the quantity of money, would exist when the transaction was com-
pleted. Hence the distinction between capitalism and earlier eco-
nomic systems could be represented by the circuit Me-C-Mfi, in which
the object of the whole process was thdtMfl was greater than M; As
Marx put it, "the general formula for Capital" was not buying in
order to sell, but buying "in order to sell dearer."2

The increment or excess over the original sum advanced in the

1 Ibid., pp. 146-147.

2 Ibid., p. 155.

23

transaction Mp—C-AM"was what Marx termed surplus value.1 Capital-
ism differed from feudalism or the slavery of antiquity in that its
object was not consumption or the satisfaction of wants, but rather
to make.M' as large as possible. The capitalist's ability to do
this originated with the laborer's need to subsist and a class di-
vision that made the laborer unable to sell commodities in which his
labor was incorporated, i.e. a separation of the laborer from the
ownership of the means of production. If such a condition were real-
ized the laborer would be left with only one commodity to offer for
sale, i.e. "that very labor power which exists only in his living
self." But capitalism presupposed another condition, namely that the
laborer be a free man. He "must be the untrammelled owner of his
capacity for labor, i.e. of his person." The capitalist relations:

demands that the owner of the labor-power should sell it

only for a definite period, for if he were to sell it

rump and stump, once for all, he would be selling him-

self, converting himself from a free man into a slave,
from an owner of a commodity into a commodity. 2

The laborer's need to subsist caused him to take his commodity,
labor—power, to the capitalist and exchange it for money with which
it was possible for him to purchase the commodities necessary for his
maintenance. For the capitalist, the exchange value of labor power
Was likewise equivalent to a quantity of commodities necessary to
Maintain the laborer because, as with all other commodities, the ex-

change value of labor could be represented by that which was neceSSary

1 Ibid., p. 1500

2 Ibid., pp. 168-169.

24

to reproduce it. In terms of the labor theory of value, the exchange
value of labor-power was equivalent to the labor time socially nec-
essary to produce the laborer's means of subsistence. But the daily
cost of maintaining the laborer was totally different from the daily
expenditure of labor power in work. "The former determines the ex—
changeavalue of the labor-power, the latter is its use-value.” But
the seller of any commodity realized its exchange value when he
parted with its use value. Similarly the seller of laborapower.

"The use-value of labor-power, or in other words, labor, belongs just
as little to its seller, as the use-value of oil after it has been
sold belongs to the dealer who has sold it." The Specific use-value
which labor-power possessed was that it was Wa‘ggggggflggt'gglyIpf
m. mammwnmsnauwl It was an. char-
acteristic of labor-power that enabled surplus value to be realized
and it was the nature of the process Mk-C-—M' that was behind the de-
sire to maximize surplus value and consequently labor productivity.
Marx pointed out that while avarice and the desire to get rich were
"the ruling passions" at the historical dawn of capitalist production,
later the laws of competition compelled the accumulation of capital,
the discovery of labor-saving improvements and generally, the maxi-
mizing of surplus value in pr0portion to necessary labor time. For

it Was only by so doing that the capitalist was able to preserve his
capital. Otherwise it surely would have been destroyed when other
capitalists undertook such improvements.2

“—

1 Ibid., p. 193.

2 of. Ibid., pp. 592-593.

25

With this sketch of MarX's economic theory as a background for
us to understand the nature of capitalism we are ready to see what
happens to the division of labor in capitalist society.

We have seen that a non-alienated exercise of the capacity for
labor would involve the free develOpment of the laborer's mental and
physical capabilities. If he was employed in work in which he was
unable to develOp these capabilities freely, Mhrx noted that he would
not enjoy the work. One distinction between man and the beasts, he
said, was man's ability consciously to plan his work and to realize a
purpose of his own. If this planning and purposiveness were absent,
the worker would become a stunted human being. This was the case in
capitalist society, Marx observed, where it was the function of the
capitalist to exercise care and planning, with the object of maXi-
mizing the return on his initial capital investment.1

The historical deve10pment of this separation began with the as-
sembling of many independent craftsmen under one roof by a single cap-
italist according to one of two systems. The first method was used
when the division of labor had already been a part of the process of
production of the commodity in question, but the craftsmen previous-
ly had been Spatially separated. When assembled together they con-
tinued to perform the same Operations they formerly had. Neverthe-
less, the exercise of their capabilities became stunted because
thereafter each pursued his trade only in relation to one product,

e.g. carriages. "Each gradually loses, through want of practice, the

1 Ibid., pp. 178, 185.

26

ability to carry on, to its full extent, his old handicraft."l The
second method involved, originally, the assembling under one roof of
a number of workmen, each of whom continued to produce the entire
commodity by performing all the operations necessary for its produc-
tion. But later, in search of methods to meet a temporary demand
for increased production, the capitalist reddistributed the work so
that the Operations were changed into disconnected, isolated ones.
The re-distribution, at first accidental, "gradually ossifies into a

systematic division of labor."2

From these origins, the capitalist’s effort to increase the
productive power of labor and thereby his profit resulted in an accumu-
lation of misery for the working man, side by side with the accumu-
lation of WBalth.3 To increase labor productivity the detail laborer
was created, "who all his life performs one and the same simple Oper-
ation," thereby converting his body "into the automatic, specialized
implement of that Operation."4 As a result, the natural inequal-
ities among men became emphasized to the greatest possible degree.
These inequalities were ossified, not only by the development of a
one-sided Speciality into a perfection, "at the eXpense of the whole
of a man's working capacity," but also by having created "a class of

so-called unskilled laborers" and thereby having made "a specialty of

—___

1 Ibid., p. 336.
2 Ibid., p. 337.
3 Ibid., p. 645.

4 Ibid., p. 339.

27

the absence of all develOpment."l Finally, in the later stages of
capitalist develOpment, the separation of workers into skilled and
unskilled began to vanish, because in numerical terms "unskilled
labor constitutes the bulk of all labor performed in capitalist so-
ciety, as may be seen from all statistics."2 With the advent of the
automatic factory, the artificially produced differences of the de-
tail workers disappeared as all work was equalized and reduced to the
same level. Although technicians and mechanics were necessary to
look after the machinery, according to Marx this group was numerically

unimportant.3

With nearly all workers having become the living appendages of
machines, all of their freedom, both in bodily and intellectual activ-
ity, was confiscated. Modern industry completed "the separation of
the intellectual powers of production from the mannal labor;" hence
while it did not free the laborer from work it deprived the work of
all interest. Furthermore, he workman, as early as childhood began
to be transformed "into a part of a detail-machine." It was necessary
to begin his training early so that he learned "to adapt his own
movements to the uniform and unceasing motion of an automaton," but
the cost of this training was considerably reduced because it was not

4 E

necessary for him to acquire any skills. ngels observed that jobs

__.

1 Ibid., pp. 349-350.
2 A Contribution to the Critiqpe of Political Economy (herein-

after referred to as Contribution... , ChicagO, 1904, Charles H.
Kerr and 00., p. 25.

3 Ca ital, Vol. I, p. 420.
4 Ibid., pp. 421-423.

28

of this kind gave the worker "no scepe for exercising his intelli-
gence," but "since the Operator must pay some attention to the mach-
ine to ensure that nothing is going wrong...he is prevented from
thinking about anything else." A man working in this manner was "de-
graded to the level of a beast" with no opportunity for intellectual
activities} Engels added that in what little leisure time the
worker had, he was unlikely to deveIOp his mind because, having come
home, "tired and exhausted from his labors" to an unattractive dwell-
ing he felt urgently the need for a stimulant

to recompense him for his labors during the day and an-

able him to face the prospect of the next day's dreary

toil....In these circumstances the worker is obviously

subject to the strongest temptation to drink to excess;

and it is hardly surprising that he often succumbs. 2
The workers were left with only two pleasures - drink and sexual in-
tercourse -— with the result that "to get something out of life" they
indulged these "to excess and in the grossest fashion."3

We can now see how Narxism treated the natural inequalities

that it did observe among men. Capitalism had superimposed arti-
ficial inequalities on those that occurred naturally. The result was
that nearly all working men finally appeared to be equal because the
demands of the system caused them all to be equally unskilled. It is
significant that in discussing the labor theory of value Narx reduced
skilled labor to unskilled, apparently for convenient analysis. But

While he pointed out that by making the reduction he was simply sav-

‘—

1 Conditions.,., p. 134.

2 Ibid., p. 116.

3 Ibid., p. 11.1..

29

ing himself a superfluous Operationl he did not think of the reduc-
tion as a simple abstraction because it was "an abstraction which
takes place daily in the social process of production."2 That this
reduction was the actual tendency of capitalist production could be
seen in the automatic workshop:

Time is everything, man is nothing....Quality no longer

matters. Quantity alone decides everything....one work-

er's labor is scarcely distinguishable in any way from

another worker's labor: workers can only be distinguished

one from another by the length of time they take for

their work. 3
The workman became "an appendage of the machine," and it was only
"the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack,"
that was required of him.4 His Special skills, his bodily and intel-
lectual faculties became worthless. "He becomes transformed into a
simple, monotonous productive force....His labor becomes a labor
that anyone can perform."5

To all appearances a very wide gap existed between the abili-

ties of different men, but while the natural existence of some gap

might have been a cause of the division of labor, the size of the gap

 

1 Capital, V010 I, p0 1980

2 Contribution..., p. 25.

 

3 Narx, The Poverty of Philosophy, London, undated, Martin
Lawrence Ltd., pp. 46~47o

4 Manifesto of the Communist Part1, New York, 1948: Internation-
al Publishers, p. 16.

5 Nprx, wage Labor and Capital, Moscow, 1954, Foreign Languages
Publishing House, P- 0

30

was a result of the division of labor under Capitalism. Adam Smith
believed that in an advanced civilization "this is the state into
which the laboring poor, that is, the great body of the people must
necessarily fall,"1 and Nbrx noted that Smith recommended public ed-
ucation to prevent "the complete deterioration of the great mass of
the people."2 Of course Marx did not accept this view of the neces-
sity of the case, but otherwise his view of the division of labor was
identical with that of Adam Smith. According to Smith, (as quoted by
Man).

the difference of natural talents in different men, is,

in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very

different genius which appears to distinguish men of di-

verse professions, when grown up to maturity, is not so

much the ggpgg as the gffggt of the division of labor.3
"In principle," Narx added, paraphrasing Smith, "a porter differs
less from a philos0pher than a mastiff from a greyhound. It is the
division of labor which has set a gulf between them."4 We can see
how close Smith and harx were on this point by the following citation
of Smith in Volume I of Capital:

The understandings of the greater part of men are nec-

essarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man
whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple

 

1 The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 1, cited by Marx,
Ca ital, Vol. I, p. 362.

2 Ibid.

3 Smith, pp, 333., Book 1, Chapter 2, cited by Marx, The Pov-
erty_of Philosophy, p. 109, emphaSiS METX'So)

4 Ibid.

31

Operations...has no occasion to exert his understand-
ing....He generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as
it is possible for a human creature to become....The
uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts
the courage of his mind....It corrupts even the activ-
ity of his body and renders him incapable of exerting
his strength with vigor and perseverance in any other
employments than that to which he has been bred. His
dexterity at his own particular trade seems in this
manner to be acquired at the expenie of his intellect-
ual, social, and martial virtues.

Unlike Smith, Marx expected the antithesis between mental and
physical labor to Vanish,2 and to give way to "an association, in
which the free deve10pment of each is the condition for the free de-

velOpment of all."3 This would be a society in which alienation

would disappear. In its place would arise "the rich human being...

 

in 312951 9; a totality of human life-activities.“

The education clauses of the Factory Acts and the educational
system preposed by Robert Owen were the prototype of what Marx meant
by the abolition of the antithesis between mental and physical labor.
Harx noted that the success of the educational clauses of the Factory
Acts "proved for the first time the possibility of combining educa-
tion and gymnastics with manual labor, and, consequently, of combinp

ing manual labor with education and gymnastics." He quoted approvingly

 

1 Smith, 29. 93., Book v, Chapter 1, cited by Marx, Ca ital,
Vol. I, p. 3620

2 Critique of the Gotha Programme, Moscow, 1954, Foreign Lan-
guages Publishing House, p. 26.

3 manifesto of the Communist Party, p. 31.

4 Economic and PhilOSOphic Manuscripts, p. 111, emphasis in
original.

32

the report of a factory inepector that noted that "half manual labor
and half school renders each employment a rest and a relief to the
other; consequently, both are far more congenial to the child, than
would be the case were he kept constantly at one." In addition,
long school hours, as shown in the case of the children of the upper
and middle classes, only added uselessly to the labor of the teacher

while wasting the time, health and energy of the children.1

Accord-
ing to Narx, Owen had shown in detail
the germ of the education of the future, an education
that will, in the case of every child over a given age,
combine productive labor with instruction and gymnast-
ics, not only as one of the methods of adding to the
efficiency of production, but as the onl method of
producing fully deveIOped human beings.

While Narx and Engels may have recognized some inequalities among
men, they saw in the historical deveIOpment of the division of labor
under capitalism the production of artificial inequalities. Capital-
ism progressively begat, in their view, fewer and fewer persons of
talent, more and more unskilled laborers. It was not that the ordin-
ary man had an inherent inability to exercise his intellectual cap-
acities; it was the division of labor that was reSponsible for his
ignorance. But Harx and Engels did not choose to return to a society
that pre—dated the capitalist division of labor. In Narx's view, the

men of that kind of society were care-burdened; they were caught up

"in crude practical need."3 By excluding the division of labor within

 

1 Ca ital, Vol. I, pp. 482-483.
2 Ibid., pp. 483-4840

3 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, p. 108.

33

each separate process of production as well as the control over pro-
duction by society as a whole, the society in which each man was the
pr‘vate owner of his own means of production moved "within narrow and
more or less primitive bounds. To perpetuate it would be...to decree
universal mediocrity."l
The division of labor under capitalism was therefore a step in
the direction of producing the material pre-conditions for a class-
less society and the abolition of alienation. The criticism of cap-
italism.proceeded from the observation that although these pre-condi-
tions had been created, the particular economic interest of capital-
ists, i.e. maximizing surplus labor in prOportion to necessary labor,
was a barrier standing ii the way of the full deve10pment of society's
productive resources. The capitalist bought the use of a man's labor-
power for a day. The increase in labor productivity was not used to
shorten substantially the time in which this labor—power was exer-
cised. Rather, the advantage of labor's rising productivity allowed
the capitalist to discharge those whose labor was no longer necessary
to him, to utilize their labor by the creation of new industries
that made it necessary to "seduce" consumers into new modes of gratio
fication,2 to expand the category of those engaged in unproductive
commercial activity, or to eXpand unproductive expenditures of the
state. The result was that profit maximization bred unproductive

activities but the laborer's leisure time was not freed for his per-

1 Ca ital, Vol. I, pp. 761-7620

2 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, p. 115.

34
sonal deveIOpment.

The distribution of the laborer's time was important to the
Ihrxist approach to man's intellectual potentialities. Not only had
it become unnecessary for the worker to possess skills at work, but
cepitalism was not concerned with adding to his free time nor with
helping him to achieve self—activity in the free time it did allow
him. "Time," said NarX, "is the room of human develOpment. A man
who has no free time to dispose of, whose whole lifetime, apart from
the mere physical interruptions by sleep, meals, and so forth, is ab-
sorbed by his labor for the capitalist, is less than a beast of
burden."1 Capitalism transformed "his life-time into working-time“2
and by so doing ignored what Marx called the moral limitations of i
the working day.3 To capitalism, "time for education, for intellect-
ual deve10pment, for the fulfilling of social functions and for so-
cial intercourse, for the free-play of...bodily and mental activity,
even the rest time of Sunday" was "moonshine!"4 In a long footnote
he quoted reports of employment commissions that demonstrated the
illiteracy of children whose time was fully taken up with manual
labor.5 Engels noted that at "an age when all their time should be

devoted to bodily and mental development" they were "taken from

 

l Wages Price and profit, Moscow, 1952, Foreign Languages
Publishing House, pp. 80-81.

2 Capital, Vol. I, p. 645.
3 Ibid., p. 232.
4 Ibid., p. 264.

5,;pgg., p. 259, note.

 

35

school and the fresh air" to be eXploited "for the benefit of the
manufacturers."1

Marx and Engels' approach to man's intellectual potentialities
and his capacity for leadership declared that all of the workers had
decidedly more ability in these directions than they could exercise
in capitalist society. Not only did the division of labor make it
unnecessary, from.capitalism's standpoint, for them to develOp the
full range of their potentialities, but capitalist society had not
given them.the time to do so even though it created the material pre-
conditions for them to have this time. "This immeasurable productive
capacity, handled with consciousness and in the interest of all," ac-
cording to Engels, "would soon reduce to a minimum the labor falling
to the share of mankind."2 By SUppressing the capitalist form of
production, the length of the working day could be reduced to neces-
Sary labor-time, which would then be of longer duration because the
eXpansion of the notion of "means of subsistence" would mean a higher
standard of living for the laborer and also because a part of surplus—
labor would become necessary labor in order to maintain a fund for re-
serve and accumulation. Whereas "in capitalist society spare time is
acquired for one class by converting the whole lifetime of the masses
into labor-time," it would be possible, if capitalism were super-
seded and the work more evenly divided among all able-bodied persons,

for society to have time at its diaposal "for the free deve10pment,

__

*1 Conditions..., p. 169.

2 "Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy," appendix to
Marx, Economic and Philpsgphic manuscripts, p. 199.

36

intellectual and social, of the individual."1

In the case of the workers, the division of labor under Capital-
ism had superimposed artificial human differences on the natural ones
and therefore had made them stunted human beings. Because of inad-
equate leisure time, they were unable to deve10p their human poten-
tialities fully. But the members of the ruling class were also
stunted, according to Marxism. Part of their leadership function was
unnecessary, and if it also included a necessary part the capitalists
could not fully deve10p their intellectual potentialities to under-
take it, regardless of their possession of leisure time. Their prob-
lem according to the theory of ruling class ideology, was that they
were caught up in false consciousness.

The two—fold nature of the process of capitalist production
had alienated the worker from the capitalist. On the one hand, it
Was a social process for producing use values. But for the capital-
ist it was a process for extracting the greatest possible amount of
surplus value. In this sense, surplus controls over the workers be-
came necessary that were analagous to surplus value. With the aboli-
tion of capitalism, controls over the production process would still
be required but discipline over the laborers, insofar as it has re-
sulted from a difference between the interest of the capitalist and
the common interest, would disappear. Certain aSpects of the capital-
ist's leadership function were superfluous, according to Marx, and

had been artificially superimposed upon whatever natural differences

M:-

1 Ca ital, Vol. I, p. 530.

 

37

in the capacity for leadership existed among men.

Among the ruling class itself, ideas about its dominance seemed
rationalxgniversally valid. The Narxist theory of ideology declared
that their ideas were simply the ideal eXpression of the dominant
material relationships, but appeared to be significant to the rul-
ing class apart from the individuals and conditions that were their
sources.2 The emancipation from feudalism required the accompanying
notions of freedom, equality and the rights of man. In making the
individual member of civil society the basis of the political state,
as in the rights of man, feudal society had been resolved into its
basic elements —- its individual members.3 In asserting its domin-
ance over landed prOperty, bourgeois society depicted its adversary
in immoral terms. The capitalist accused the landowner of wanting
"to replace moral capital and free labor by brute, immoral force and
serfdom." It enumerated "the baseness, cruelty, degradation, prosti-
tution, infamy, anarchy and rebellion of which romantic castles were
the workshOps." As to its own claims, it declared that it had ob-
tained political freedom for the peOple, created trade promoting
friendship between peoples, created pure morality and an agreeable de-

gree of culture and had given the peOple civilized needs and the means

of satisfying them.4 According to Marx, the egoistic individual ap-

—‘

1 Ibid., pp. 331“3320
2 The German Ideology, pp. 39-40.

3 "On The Jewish Question," in Hark, Selected Essays, London,
1926, Leonard Parsons, pp. 79 ff.

Economic and Philosgphic Manuscrigts, PP- 89'9O°

38

peared to the bourgeois to be the natural individUal and his rights

1 The political economists did not ex-

appeared to be natural rights.
plain private prOperty because they expressed as abstract laws the
material process through which private prOperty passed. They took
private prcperty and the interest of the capitalist for granted.2
They never asked why "labor is represented by the value of its pro-
duct and labor—time by the magnitude of that value."3

As capitalism develOped, the ruling class continued to perceive
its relationships as natural laws, according to Marx. This was to
be eXpected, particularly because the capitalist, while not exactly
living a life of misery, was not his own master. His passion for
wealth - formerly a mere idiosyncrasy -- grew to be "the effect of
the social mechanism, of which he is but one of the wheels." He
therefore felt the need to accumulate through "external coercive
laws." He was compelled by competition either to accumulate or to
find his capital destroyed. The process was not without its contra-
dictions for him.and he began to feel "a Faustian conflict between
the passion for accumulation, and the desire for enjoyment."4 In
short, he was as alienated as the working man, but in a different
sense because he felt perfectly satisfied with this alienation since

his power was derived from it. While the working class became de-

ll "On The Jewish Question," 22, 222-: PD. 82-83-
2 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, pp. 67—68.

3 Ca ital, Vol. I, p. 80.

4 22.1.9... pp. 592-594.

39

humanized, the capitalist retained a semblance of human existence.1
Consequently he had no cause to become radical —- to pursue social
problems to their roots. Instead, bourgeois consciousness stOpped
by attributing social evils to political Opponents within the ruling
class. Pauperism, according to the Whig, was the result of the mon-
Opoly of large landed prOperty and the corn laws. According to the
Tory, the whole evil was due to liberalism, to competition, to carry-
ing the factory system too far. Each found the cause to reside in
the policy of its Opponent; neither in politics generally. While
alive to the danger, the English middle class had an inadequate idea
of the causes. The politicians could not see that the cause of evil
was the essence of the state, but instead they found it in the fact
that their Opponents were at its helm. So far as the state recog-
nized social evils it attributed them either to natural laws, which
were amenable to no human power, or to the defects of private life,
which were independent of the state, or to the futility of admini-
stration, which was dependent on it. According to Harx, however, the
administration was impotent against the consequences which gprang
from the bourgeois private prOperty society because it was based on
that society. To abolish this impotence it would have had to abolish
the existing mode of living which meant abolishing itself, since it
existed because of the contradiction between individual and common
interests. The state could attempt to remedy what appeared to be de-

fects of administration. ‘When the modifications that were made proved

l Marx and Engels, The Holy Family, Moscow, 1956, Foreign
Languages Publishing House, p. 51.

40

to be fruitless either the problem was attributed to a natural imper-
fection independent of mankind or else to the diSpositions of private
individuals -— too vitiated to second the good intentions of the ad-
ministration. Meanwhile, the private individuals complained against
government when it restricted their freedom and then demanded that
government should correct the problems caused by the necessary conse-
quences of this freedom. Political understanding, in the sense that
Marx used the term Olitical, was incapable of discovering the source
of social distress; social well-being created political understanding,
i.e. false consciousness.1 .
For the moment we shall leave Open the question of the extent to
which the vast majority of persons possessed unrealized potentialities
to assume leadership roles in the community. We only note that the
Narxist position was that human potentialities remained unrealized be-
cause of the capitalist system. The separation of society into classes
had nothing to do with natural talent, but was based on ownership or
nonpownership of the means of production. Both the owners and the
non—owners could not develop themselves freely in a class society;
the former, because Of the ideological barrier; the latter, because
of their dehumanization by the division Of labor. In the Communist
society posited by Marx and Engels the division of mental and physical
labor would vanish. The problem of ideology would also disappear
and all men would be able to realize whatever potentialities they pos—

sessed, among them potentialities to participate in community affairs.

L

1 "On The King of Prussia and Social Reform," Selected Essays,
pp . 105-120: 1.13332-

41
CHAPTER III
WORKING CLASS COESC OUSNESS

The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent
movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense
majority.

- The Communist Manifesto

Chapter II showed that Marxism's discussion of the division of
labor did not preclude the notion of natural inequalities among men,
but did suggest that many apparent inequalities were artificially
imposed by capitalism and would disappear under communism. In the
present chapter we shall see that the changes in the doctrine of
class consciousness that came about as a result of Mhrx and Engels?
lifetime of participation in revolutionary organizations show that
they became increasingly Optimistic about the proletarian's intel-
lectual potentialities. I

mark and Engels' revolutionary theory was based on their cer-
tainty that they had arrived at a true understanding of the needs of
the proletariat. "Theory," said Marx, "is fulfilled in a peeple only
insofar as it is the fulfillment of the needs of that peeple."l In
the formation of the proletariat lay "the positive possibility of a
German emancipation" because wrong generally was perpetrated against
it; because it had "a universal character by its universal suffering;"
because it could "invoke no historical but only its human title." He

noted that the proletariat was beginning to appear in Germany and would

"Contribution to the Critique Of Hegel's Philosogahy or Right,
Introduction," in Marx and Engels, 0n Religion, p. 51.

42

herald "the dissolution of the hereto existing world order" and de-
mand "the negation of private preperty."l This is essentially what
is termed in Marxist theory the; m pf 3113931 and practice. Be-
cause the proletariat's very existence represented universal suffer-
ing, it was put in the position of achieving a true understanding of
the world in the very fulfillment of its needs.

NarX's assertion that theory must fulfill the needs of the
peOple did not mean that a class would at once be conSCious of its
needs. He believed that his treatment of the role of the proletariat
and of their needs was a true understanding, whether or not it was
grounded at a given moment in the empression by the peeple themselves
of their needs and consequently in the arrival by the masses at such
understanding. Eventually, the workers would attain that understand-
ing, when capitalism had deveIOped to such an extent that its con-
tradictions had fully manifested themselves in the workers' universal
misery. Meanwhile, Marx, as a theoretician, conceived of himself and
other communists as the most advanced section of the proletarian move-
ment,2 able to articulate the needs of the masses earlier and more
clearly than could the peOple themselves:

The question is not what this or that proletarian,
or even the whole of the proletariat at the moment
considers as its aim. The question 13.EE§E.EQE ro-
letariat‘ig, and what, consequent on that being, it
will be compelled to do. Its aim and historical ac-
tion is irrevocably and obviously demonstrated in its

own life situation as well as in the whole organiza-
tion of bourgeois society today.3

1 Ibid., pp. 56-57.
2 Cf. manifesto of the Communist Party, p. 22.

3 The Holy;Family, p. 52, emphasis in original.

43

Working class consciousness had to grow as part of the histor-
ical process. In emancipating society from feudal relationships,
the bourgeoisie proceeded from its own situation and undertook the
general emancipation of society. It thought of its understanding of
social relations as a true understanding. At the time of the bour-
geois revolution, the masses were equally enthusiastic; the bour-
geoisie was perceived and acknowledged as the general representative
of all classes and was able to speak in the name of the working
class because feudal relationships and absolute monarchy were equally
the stumbling block of the bourgeoisie and the emerging proletariat.l
This is MarX's eXplanation of how the working class was caught up in
ruling class ideology. As the movement progressed, the workers be-
gan to revolt but at the beginning of the movement they blamed their
condition on politics, as did the Capitalists. They perceived the
cause of all evils to be in the wills of men and thought all remedies
to lie in force and the overthrow of a particular form of state.2
Later, as the historical develOpment of material conditions continued,
there would be embodied in the proletariat "the complete lgsg of man."3
The emerging proletariat would find its Spiritual weapon in the con-

currently emerging social theory that identified itself with the work-

1 "A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's PhiIOSOphy of
Right, IntrOdUCtion," 22. go, p. 540

2 "On the King of Prussia and Social Reform," Selected Essays,

3 "A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of
Right, IntrOduCtion," 920 9-1-20, p. 570

 

 

44

ing class and it would become clear that the rule of the bourgeoisie
had become antiquated.1 it first, it was likely that the working
class would fail to understand its aim although theoreticians such
as Marx and Engels might have already attained such understanding.
But sooner or later the workers would achieve a sufficient degree
of consciousness to prompt them to revolutionary action. This was
inevitable but it would occur only at the preper stage of develOp-
ment of the material conditions of life. Until then it was "absolutely
immaterial whether the 'idea' of this revolution" had been eXpressed
a hundred times.2

Marx and Engels wavered between Optimism and pessimism about
the degree to which their understanding of the proletarian movement
coincided with that of the workers themselves. Before 1848, they
were decidedly Optimistic, although Narx did note as early as 1844
that the revolutionary movement was likely to be "a very severe and

protracted process."3 But recognition that the proletariat might

 

1 Ibid., pp. 55-57. Alfred G. Neyer notes that if the theory
of ideology is applied to the working class it might easily appear
that the workers could not be convinced by inspired intellectuals
such as Marx and Engels, since "the ideology of the ruling class is
fostered on the helpless minds of the eXploited." Meyer shows that
Marx's reply to this challenge would have been in terms of the com-
plete detachment of the workers in a radical negation of the social
structure. It would be well to add that this is a historical pro—
cess. As we have seen in the text above, the workers were thought
to be the victims of false consciousness at the beginning of the
movement, but that history was moving toward their achievement of
true consciousness. Cf. Neyer, Narxism, Cambridge, Mass., 1954,
Harvard University Press, pp. 96 ff.

2 The German Ideology, pp. 29-30.

3 Economic and Philosophic manuscri ts, p. 124.

 

45

not understand its historical role "at the moment," often dissolved
into boundless Optimism. The theoreticians, said Marx, having passed
the stage Of utOpia building, no longer had to seek science in their
minds.‘ "They have only to take note of what is happening before
their eyes and to become the mouthpiece of this."1 Engels, infected
even more with an Optimistic view, had already develOped the thesis
that given the worker's conditions of existence, he could retain his
humanity only by violent hatred against his fate and against the
bourgeoisie. "This and this alone fills the thoughts of the Operat-
ives when they are not tending their machines."2 He did add that
"they become animals as soon as they submit patiently to their yoke,
and try to drag out a bearable existence under it without attempting
to break free,"3 and that if they were "not inepired to a fury of
indignation against their Oppressors, then they sink into drunkeness
and all other forms of demoralizing vice."4 But although Engels
posited vice as an alternative to rebellion and also remarked about
"the extent to which drunkenness and sexual license prevail in the
factory towns"5 he retained his Optimism by asserting that "the work-

ers...are determined" that the state of affairs would not continue.6

 

l The Poverty Of Philosophy, p. 106.

 

2 Conditions..., p. 200.
3 gggg., p. 129.
4'l§é§., p. 200.

5 2112.,

6 Ibid., p. 240.

46

We can see this Optimism also in the assertion that the average

En lish worker desnite near illiterac' had "a shrewd notion of where
8 3 - 3:

1

his own interest and that of his country 119;" In the observation

that the vast majority of the workers patronized working-class read-

ing rooms to "discuss matters which really affect their own inter-

2

ests; and in the prediction that the workers would not put up with

another commercial crisis.3 This did not mean that the need for
leadership was ignored. Engels' tone appears to be that the workers
were students, but that they were outstanding students:

There can be no doubt that the workers are inter-
ested in acquiring a sound education, provided that it
is not tainted by the 'wisdom' spread by prejudiced
middle-class teachers. This is proved by the pupular-
ity of lectures on economic and on scientific and aes-
thetic tOpics which are frequently held at working-class
institutes, particularly those run by Socialists. I
have sometimes come across workers...who are better in-
formed On geology, astronomy and other matters, than
many an educated member of the middle classes in Germany.
NO better evidence of the extent to which the English
workers have succeeded in educating themselves can be
brought forward than the fact that the most important
modern works in philOSOphy, poetry and politics are in
practice read only by the proletariat. The middle classes,
enslaved by the influences generated by their environment,
are blinded by prejudice. They are horror-stricken at the
very idea Of reading anything Of a really progressive
nature. The working classes, on the other hand, have no
such stupid inhibitions and devour such works with pleas-
ure and profit. In this connection the Socialists have a
wonderful record of achievement, for they have promoted
the education of the workers by translating the works of

 

1 Ibid., p. 128.
2 Ibid., pp. 271-272.

3 Ibid., p. 334.

47

such great French materialist philOSOphers as
Halvetius, Holbach and Diderot.l

Thus the workers needed teachers: above, the Socialists, but they
learned about their unique position in history with ease:

The workers are conscious of the fact that they form a
separate class, and have their own interests, policies,
and points of view, which are Opposed to those of the
capitalist prOperty owners. Above all they are con-
scious of the fact that on their shoulders rests the
real power of the nation and the hOpe of its future pro-‘

grass. 2
Privately, as early as 1846 and 1847, Engels eXpressed his mis-
givings when his enemies in the movement, Grfin and Hess, were, in

his view, misleading the workers.3 The hhnifesto also appears to

have recognized the possibility of setbacks. For example:

How and then the workers are victorious, but only
for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not
in the immediate result, but in the ever eXpanding
union of the workers.

This organization of the proletarians into a class,
and consequently into a political party, is continually
being upset again by the competition between the workers
themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger,

firmer, mightier.5

 

1 Ibid., p. 272.

2 Ibid., p. 273.
3 Letters to Marx, September 18, 1846 and November 23-24, 1847,
in Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, New York, 1942, Inter-

national Publishers, pp. 20, 22.

A Manifesto of the Communist PaZEX, p. 18.

5 Ibid.

48

In the various stages of develOpment which the
struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie
has to pass through, (the communists) always and every-
where represent the interests of the movement as a
whole....The Communists, therefore, are on the one
hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute sec-
tion of the working class parties of every country,
that section which pushes forward all others; on the
other hand, theoretically, they have over the great
mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly under-
standing the line of march, the conditions, and the
ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

The latter quotation seems to be a clear statement of an in-
equality of theoretical understanding between the proletariat and the
Communists. But in predicting a bourgeois revolution in Germany as
"but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution,"2
Narx and Engels were eXpressing their Optimism about the degree to
which the proletariat would attain consciousness. For by their own
statement, this "inevitable" movement could not be that of a minor-

ity, but must be the self-conscious movement of the majority acting

in its own interest.3

It appears from a scruitiny of the works cited in the preced-
ing pages that while Marx and Engels were optimistic about the workers'
ability to attain consciousness, they also recognized that the theo-
reticians of the movement might have a better theoretical understand-
ing than the workers. This seems to be a contradiction, but it ap-

pears to be resolved when we try to clarify what was meant in 1848

1 Ibid., p. 22.

2 Ibid., p. 1.4.

3 Ibid., p. 22.

49

when Marx and Engels Spoke of proletarian consciousness. We have
seen that the workers in London went to the lecture halls to learn
about economic theory from the Socialists. Similarly, above, Marx
and Engels asserted the theoretical advantage possessed by the Com-
munists over the great mass. It would be over-simplifying matters,
therefore, simply to suggest that by proletarian consciousness they
meant full theoretical understanding on the part of the workers. It
is likely that their self-conception was expressed in the manifesto
when they described how,

when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the

process of dissolution going on within the ruling

c1ass...assumes such a violent, glaring character

that a small section of the ruling class cuts it-

self adrift, and joins the revolutionary class....

and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideol-

ogists, who have raised themselves to the level of

comprehending theoretically the historical movement

as a whole.
In 1848, they did not suggest that the workers had achieved this level
of theoretical comprehension. A few years later, in referring to the
Proudonhists, whom Harx termed the representatives of the petty bour-
geoisie, he declared

what makes them representatives...is the fact that in

their minds they do not go beyond the limits which the

latter do not go beyond in life, that they are conse-

quently driven theoretically to the same tasks and so-

lutions to which material interest and social position

practically drive the latter. 2

Then he added the decisive statement of his doctrine that we must as-

L

1 Ibid., p. 19.

2 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, New York, undated,
International Publishers, p. 44.

5O

sume should be applied to the communists also: "This is in general
the relationship of the pglitical and literary representatizgg of a
class to the class that they represent."1 It was not so much that
the workers understood theoretically their tasks and solutions, but
their material interest and social position were decisive in bring-
ing them to these tasks and solutions "in life."

Still, the inclusion of one notion in the Manifesto, namely
that the communists have a Special role, that of being the most ad-
vanced section of the movement and pushing forWard all the others,
Opened the door to a changed approach to the workers' movement when
Narx and Engels later realized that they had been overly enthusiastic
about the capacity for a working-class victory in 1848. Looking
back, in 1895, Engels declared that "there were but a very few peOple
who had any idea at all of the direction in which this emancipation
was to be sought. The proletarian masses themselves, even in Paris,
after the victory, were still absolutely in the dark as to the path
to be taken." Their view at the time, he said, was that although the
leaders were a minority, it would be easy to win the great masses of
the peeple "to ideas which were the truest reflection of their eco—
nomic condition, which were nothing but the clear rational eXpression
of their needs, of needs not yet understood but merely vaguely felt
by them." That history proved them wrong, he continued, was due to
"the state of economic develOpment on the continent at that time....

not, by a long way, ripe for the elimination of capitalist produc—

1 . . . . .
Ibid., empaaSis in original.

51

tion."1

But, in addition, the notion of consciousness had undergone a
change. we have suggested how in 1848 practical consciousness was
sufficient - i.e., the consciousness neceSSary for the workers to
know that they must engage in revolution. Later this was termed as
revolution "carried through by small conscious minorities at the
head of unconscious masses" because "the history of the last 50
years" had taught that "the masses themselves must also be in it,
must themselves already have graSped what is at stake, what they are
going in for with body and soul." 80 that the masses could under-
stand what was to be done, long persistent work Was required, "and it
is just this work that we are now pursuing, and with a success which
drives the enemy to despair."2

The history of the movement had made Marx and Engels less 0p-
timistic about the ease with which revolution could be accomplished.
Their correSpondence is filled with remarks that the workers had be-
come bourgeois due to prOSperity, that they were ignorant and that the
task of education was difficult, that the improvement in communica-
tions was a powerful counter-force to their efforts. Yet, as the
above quotation of Engels shows, they never lost hepe in the success
of the movement. Instead, Engels appears to have been suggesting not

only that the masses must attain greater theoretical understanding

EIiEngels' 1895 introduction to Marx, The Class Struggles in
France, Moscow, 1952, Foreign Languages Publishing House, pp. 18~l9.

2 Ibid., pp. 35-36.

52

than had formerly been thought necessary, but also that they £232
capable of absorbing the instruction. Therefore, hile he became
less Optimistic about the gggg with which revolution could occur,
for our purposes h£_actually became more gptimistic. Formerly, the
doctrine of proletarian consciousness had suggested that the revolu-
tion sprang not from the masses' theoretical appreciation of their
task, but from their material conditions. As Harx eXpressed it:
As soon as it has risen up, a class in which the rev-

olutionary interests Of society are concentrated finds

the content and the material for its revolutionary activ-

ity directly in its own situation: foes to be laid low,

measures dictated by the needs Of the struggle to be

taken; the consequences of its own deeds drive it on. It

makes no theoretical inquiries into its own task.1
In later eXposition of the doctrine this was no longer the case.
The masses must have grasped what was at stake and what was to be
done, and they would do so if the communists were persistent.

Such a view brings us back to our main line Of inquiry. We
have been asking to what degree Marx and Engels believed the masses
to be endowed with unfulfilled potentialities for leadership and par-
ticipation in theoretical affairs and we have seen that while they
recognized unequal natural endowments they felt that the division of
labor and the absence of leisure time had stunted the working man.

As we haVe already indicated, although they saw that human potential-
ities were unequal and they implied differences in intelligence among

men, they were Optimistic about those who appeared to lack talent be-

cause they felt that this was an illusory condition caused by lack of

1 Ibid., p. 61.

 

53

need for skilled laborers. The history of their approach to pro-
letarian consciousness, however, shows their ambivalence on this
matter. While they became more concerned about the need for theo-
retical leaders, they eXpected the masses to absorb the teachings
of those leaders. A doctrine that contrasts leaders with followers
seems to be a doctrine about persons with unequal abilities. Yet
Marx and Engels never lost hOpe in the capacity of the masses to
absorb theoretical knowledge. 0n the contrary, if the above dis-

cussion is correct, they gained hOpe.

 

54
CHAPTER IV
EVnflY MAN AH ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR?

A single violin player is his own conductor; an orchestra

requires a separate one.
-- Karl Marx

Those of us who attend concerts have probably come to recognize
the important role of the conductor. Even in the most distinguished
symphony orchestras, where each musician is an artist in his own
right, the conductor must be familiar with the instruments of every-
one of them. He must understand the composition as a whole and the
role of each musician in creating a commendable performance. More-
over, he must usually bring to a musical composition his own under-
standing of the intentions of the composer, his own interpretation -—
because the written sheet music does not usually provide an unam-
biguous statement of how it will sound when performed by the orches-
tra. In each of these tasks, the role of the conductor usually is
reSpected by the members of the orchestra. While now and then we
hear of cases of temperamental artists, most of the time the musi-
cians recognize that the conductor has come to his position after many
years of learning and performance of his own. Consequently, they re-
Spect his ability to fulfill his tasks, in addition to realizing that
the role of coordinator must be undertaken by someone, just as each
member of the orchestra fulfills his particular role. They are not
likely to feel any difference of interest between themselves and their

conductor. In a symphony orchestra, the individual and the common

55

interests are united.
Karl Harx conceived of the relationship between peeple who are

working and living together and their leaders as similar in nature
to that existing between the orchestra and its conductor. In a so-
ciety where exploitation had disappeared, he eXpected leadership of
this nature to emerge because

all combined labor on a large scale requires, more or

less, a directing authority, in order to secure the

harmonious working of the individual activities, and

to perform the general functions that have their ori-

gin in the action of the combined organism, as dis-

tinguished from the action of its separate organs.

According to Marx, the controls in capitalist society were two-

fold. On the one hand, the productive process was "a social process
for producing use-values." Consequently a director was necessary,
just as an orchestra conductor is necessary. On the other hand, it
Was "a process for crea ing surplus value" and in this sense the in-
diViQual and the common interests were alienated, in contrast to the
character of a symphony orchestra. The worker's presence in the fac-
tory was conditioned on the sale of his only commodity, his capacity
to labor, so that he could obtain the commodities necessary for his
subsistence. But for the capitalist who purchased this labor-power
the worker's presence was solely contingent on the directing motive
of capitalist production, namely, "to extract the greatest possible

amount of surplus—value, and consequently to eXplOit labor-power to

the ETGateSt possible degree."2

1 Ca ital, Vol. I, pp. 330-331.

2 22.1.4.” pp. 331-332.

56

In communist society, this distinction between the individual
and common interests would disappear. We can therefore clarify
Harx and Engels' much abused concept of the "withering away of the
state" by understanding that what they meant by the state was an in-
dependent institution within society, "divorced from the real inter-
ests of individual and community" but existing to provide a stage
upon which the class struggle could be fought. The state, in Marx-
ist theory, is identical with the class struggle and synonymously
with "a contradiction between the interest of the individual and that
of the community."1 The state, as the illusory community, took on an
independent existence in relation to the individuals, whereas "in the
real community the individuals obtain their freedom in and through
their association."2 Even the most democratic institutions of cap-
italist society were no solution because they merely allowed the class
struggle to be fought Openly in the political arena but continued to
express, in legal terms, the prOperty relations of capitalism.

We can better understand the meaning of "the withering away of
the state" to Marx and Engels by recognizing that the class struggle,
and therefore the state, exemplified to them the alienation of man
from man. The state, said Marx, "is based upon the contradiction be-
tween the public and private life, upon the contradiction between the

general and individual interests." To abolish this contradiction is

 

l The German Ideology, p. 23.

2 Ibid., pp. 7L-75.

 

 

 

57

to abolish itself.l Along with religion and family, the return of
man from the notion of the state represents "the positive transend-
ence of all estrangement" to man's "human, i.e. gggial mode of ex-
istence....Nhat is to be avoided above all is the re-establishing
of 'Society' as an abstraction vis-a-vis the individual. The indi-
vidual ig the social being. His life is therefore an eXpression
and confirmation of social life."2 But bourgeois society instead
took all common interests and put them in the hands of the bureauc-
racy:

The Legitimist monarchy and the July monarchy
added nothing but a greater division of laborin the
existing state machinery growing in the same meas-
ure that the division of labor within bourgeois so-
ciety created new groups of interests, and, there-
fore, new material for state administration. Every
common interest was straightway severed from society,
counterposed to it as a higher, general interest,
snatched from the self—activity of society's members
and made an object of governmental activity from the
bridge, the school-house and the communal prOperty of
a village community to the railways, the national
wealth and the national university of France. The
parliamentary republic, finally, in its struggle
against the revolution, found itself compelled to
strengthen, along with the repressive measures, the
resources and centralization of governmental power.
All the revolutions perfected this machine instead
of smashing it up.3

 

T"On the King of Prussia and Social Reform," in Marx, Selected
Essa's, p. 117.

2 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, pp. 103-105, emphasis
in original.

3 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, p. 107, empha-
sis in original.

 

 

58

Nirx and Engels called for the destruction of the state machine
because in their view the state was a manifestation of class antago-
nisms and alienation. Because they believed that man was social by
nature they conceived of men associated together, with agencies of
communal affairs. But in Engels' view, an association such as the
Paris Commune "was no longer a state in the preper sense of the word."
He and Harx therefore prOposed "to replace state everywhere by the
word Gemeinwesen (community), a good old German word which can very
well represent the French commune."1 Therefore, though Narx posited
the smashing UP of the state he could ask about the social functions
that would remain in existence "that are analagous to present func-
tions of the state."2 As in the symphony orchestra, the individual
and the common interests would be one. While the need for leadership
would be acknowledged, in a classless society there could be no an-
tipathy toward leaders. Antipathy would dissolve in the recognition
that leaders' interests were not different from those of other men.

We now have to try to determine who, in Marx and Engels' view,
Was qualified to serve in the role analagous to the conductor. If
we take the orchestra as being analagous to society it would appear
to the author that persons in leading roles have superior skill be-
cause of training, age, aptitude, intelligence and similar character-
istics and that it would be unlikely that every person within the so-
ciety would fulfill these roles competently because of differences in

l Engels' letter to Bebel, March 18-23, 1875, Selected Corre-
sQOndence, pp. 336-337, emphasis in original.

rititue of tae Gotha Programme, p. 41.

59

experience, training, aptitude and intelligence. Before we go on to
examine the Marxist position with reSpect to leadership, we ought to
look at what Marx and Engels said generally about such differences
among men.

The stories of the poor boys who achieved wealth because of
unusual ability might be one way to prove that in general the people
of the working class were not inherently lacking in intelligence and
business sense. That is, since the odds against success were over-
whelming, one worker might happen to achieve success only if a great
many had the capacity to do so. Interestingly enough, Narx did not
take this approach, but suggested, in tones resembling the Horatio
Alger stories, that the poor boys who were successful might have
been more intelligent than the rest. Thus, the tendency toward equal-
ity of Opportunity in the capitalist system was a means to secure
"the supremacy of capital itself" by the recruiting of "ever new
forces for itself out of the lower layers of society." He likened
this characteristic of the system to that of the Catholic Church in
the Middle Ages in which the hierarchy was formed "out of thg‘bgst
brains of peeple without regard to estate, birth, or wealth." It
"Was one of the principle means," said Marx, "of fortifying priest
rule and suppressing the laity. The more a ruling class is able to
assimilate the more prominent men gf'a ruled class, the more solid
1

and dangerous is its rule."

Having already seen in harx's approach to the history of the di-

1 CaEital, Vol. III, Chicago, 1909, Charles H. Kerr and 00.,
pp. 705-7 , emphasis supplied.

60

vision of labor, the theory that natural inequalities among men had
been emphasized and ossified by capitalism, we should not be sur-
prised at this conception of persons of unequal talent among the
"ruled class." In fact, Marx had little commitment to the natural
right phiIOSOphies of equality of 17th and 18th century political
thought that were the slogans of the French Revolution and the phil-
OSOphic foundation of America's Declaration of Independence. His
approach to equality went no further than to develOp a labor theory
of value, "the secret" of which was "that all kinds of labor are
equal and equivalent."1
Over and over in the writings of Marx and Engels, we have clear
statements about natural inequalities. Not only were the different
"natural endowments" recognized as "the foundation on which the di-
vision of labor is built up,"2 but also it was noted that the division
of labor posited by classical political philos0phy was a consequence
of "the various bents and talents of men."3 The quantitative equiva-
lence of the labor of commodity producers could in fact serve as a
standard of measurement or payment in the early stages of proletarian
dictatorship only if it were also recognized that "one man is super—
ior to another physically or mentally and so supplies more labor in

the same time, or can labor for a longer time."4 That individuals

1 Capital, Vol. I, p. 60.

2 Ibid., p. 349.
3 Ibid., p. 365.

4 Critique of the Gotha Programme, p. 25.

61

were unequally endowed was for Harx a self-evident truth. "They
would not be different individuals if they were not unequal."l
Engels suggested the sc0pe of human inequalities in terms not dif-
ferent from those used in ordinary conversation when he asserted that
one man could have determination and energy while another was irreso-

lute, inert and slack; one could be quick-witted while another was

sturid-Z But it was the nature of capitalist society, Marx asserted,
that wealth had the power of "overturning and confounding...all human
and natural qualities:"

Thus, what I‘gm and am capable of is by no means deter-
mined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for
myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not
Egly, for the effect of ugliness -- its deterrent power
- is nullified by money. I, in my character as an in-
dividual, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-
four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest,
unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honored, and there-
fore so is its possessor....That which I am unable to do
as 3.222: and of which therefore all my individual essen-
tial powers are incapable, I am able to do my means of
money.

Therefore capitalist society was subject to criticism because untal-
ented persons could, if they happened to be wealthy, purchase the
services of the talented -- "and is he who has power over the talented

not more talented than the talented?"4

1 Ibid., p. 26.
2 AntiéDfihring, p. 112.

3 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, pp. 138-139, emphasis
in original.

4 Ibid.

62

These insights into natural ineqUalities prompted Engels to de-
clare that the proletarian demand for equality was either a reaction
against "the crying social inequalities" of the day or against "the
bourgeois demand for equality." The demand served "as an agitational
means in order to rouse the workers against the capitalists on the
basis of the capitalists' own assertions" and therefore stood and
fell "with bourgeois equality itself." Because, as we have seen, in-
dividuality meant inequality, "the real content of the proletarian de- t
mand for equality is the demand for the abolition.g£ classes. Any de— -
mand for equality which goes beyond that, of necessity passes into
absurdity."1

The potentialities of the working class were therefore unequal
potentialities. But this approach to inequalities followed that of
Adam Smith in that it attributed talent in some area to all men and
did not depreciate those who were less.gifted mentally. This was What
Smith meant when he said.that "among men...the most dissimilar gen-
iuses are of use to one another."2h

With this be kground, we are in a better position to try to
learn who would possess the talent for leadership in a communist so—
ciety and what the exercise of that talent would involve.

Let us begin by turning to Marx's description of the Paris
Commune where "plain working men for the first time dared to infringe

upon the governmental privilege of their 'natural superiors,‘ and,

—‘

1 Anti-D‘uhring, pp. 120—121, emphasis in original.

2 The Health of Nations, Book I, cited by Marx in Economics
and PhilOSOthc Manuscripts, p. 131.

63

under circumstances of unexampled difficulty, performed their work
modestly, conscientiously, and efficiently..."1 In this conception
of workers as administrators, it remains to be seen whether Marx
was implying that, as with the poor boys who became wealthy, at
least some proletarians were capable of taking on leadership roles,
or if he was instead suggesting that this was a capability of the
working class generally. According to Marx "the few important func-
tions which still remain for a central government were not to be
suppressed...but were to be discharged by Communal, and therefore,

"2

strictly responsible agents. When discussing these functions,

Narx limited his concern to the process of production which involved
the need to apportion labor-time "in accordance with a definite so-
cial plan"3 and for conscious social control and regulation of the
process of production.4
Marx called the planning skill "intelligence in production"
and noted that in capitalist society it expanded in one direction
because it vanished in many others. "What is lost by the detail

laborers, is concentrated in the capital that employs them."5 But

although Marx asserted that capitalism estranged from the worker

 

l The Civil War in France, Moscow, 1952, Foreign Languages
Publishing House, p. 97.

2 Ibid., p. 910
3 Genital, V01. I, p. 790

4 Ibid., p. 356.

5 Ibid., p. 361.

 

 

64

"the intellectual potentialities of the labor-process,"l he indi-
cated also that in the c00perative factory the job of manager would
remain but that the manager would be "paid by the laborers instead
of representing capital against them."2 Presumably he meant that
persons who had the potentialities to fulfill this role would also
have the Opportunity in a communist society. Equality of Opportun-
ity would be a reality, not merely a tendency, and the abolition of
classes would mean that talented persons would not be disadvantaged
as they had formerly been simply by their membership in the working
class.

That the managers would be the responsible agents of society
does not make clear how society would select them. It was in dis-
cussing the Paris Commune that Marx indicated that he envisioned a
democratic selection process. Indeed, "nothing could be more foreign
to the Spirit of the Commune than to supersede universal suffrage by
hierarchic investiture."3 Marx had clearly indicated that not all
men had the talent to discharge the managerial functions, but his
favoring of universal suffrage shows that he expected each citizen
of the classless society to be competent to select the persons who
did have this talent. Apparently Marx avoided thinking about the
possibility that the masses might not be rational enough to make

this selection. That this problem might not have occurred to him is

1 Ibid., p. 645.

2 Ca ital, Vol. III, p. 456.

3 The Civil War in France, p. 92.

65

suggested by the fact that only lately has concern about apathy and
irrational voting behavior become an important element of modern po-
litical theory. The doctrine of class consciousness suggested that
the workers would attain theoretical understanding of the workings
of society, once they had emancipated themselves from capitalism.
Indeed, such understanding was held to be required for the emancipa-
tion to occur. But this position with reSpect to consciousness ap-
pears to contradict marx and Engels' own remarks about natural in-
equalities, cited above. It is pOSSible that they absorbed some of
the democratic ideology that was prevalent in the wake of the French
Revolution or that their study of classical economics predisposed

them to eXpect peOple to behave rationally.l

1 In fact, if we were to take a Marxian or Mannheinian position
with reSpect to the limitations caused by a thinker's background, per-
haps the entire doctrine of class consciousness can be sucsumed under
the broader notion of rational behavior that played so important a
part in classical economics. There is also the suggestion in Chapter
VI of The Holy Family that the doctrine is partly rooted in Hobbesian
materialism:

There is no need of any great penetration to see from the teach-
ing of materialism on the original goodness and equal intellect—
ual endowment of men, the omnipotence of eXperience, habit and
education, and in the influence of environment on man, the great
significance of industry, the justification of enjoyment etc.,
how necessarily materialism is connected with communism and so-
cialism. If man draw: all his knowledge, sensation, etc. from
the world of the senses and the eXperience gained in it, the
empirical world must be arranged so that in it man eXperiences
and gets used to what is really human and that he becomes aware
of himself as man.

Engels seems to take a similar view in the essay on historical mater-
ialism in which he asserts that

So long as we take care to train and to use our senses properly,
and to keep our action within the limits prescribed by percep-
tions properly made and preperly used, so long we shall find
that the result of our action proves the conformity of our per-
ceptions with the objective nature of the things perceived.

66

In our orchestra analogy, universal suffrage would mean that
each musician participated in the choice of the conductor on the
basis of the decisions of each about the qualifications of prospective
conductors. Those without administrative talent would be able to de-
termine who did have that talent. But it was Engels who carried
democracy to its highest degree -- who made every musician (man) an
orchestra conductor - when he described how the abolition of the di-
vision of labor would mean the participation of all men in community
affairs. In the same work in which he wrote an inequalities, Engels
suggested that "society liberated from the barriers of capitalist
production" would create "a race of producers with an all-round train-
ing who understand the scientific basis of industrial production as
a whole."1 According to Engels, the final reason for defending class
differences was that there had to be a class which was not plagued
"with the production of its daily subsistence, in order that it may
have time to look after the intellectual work of society."2 This
kind of division of labor had been justified on grounds of necessity,

but that justification no longer existed:

 

Apparently this position would be that differences in the abil-
ity to perceive are produced by differences in the way men have been
trained and are not attributable to any natural differences among
men. But this would contradict Engels‘ own remarks, cited above.

Cf. "On Historical Materialism," Special introduction to 1892 English
edition of Socialism: UtOpian and Scientific, Moscow, 1954, Foreign
Languages Publishing House.

2 The Housing Question, New York, undated, International Pub-
liSherS , p. 300

67

So long as the really working population was so much

occupied in their necessary labor that they had no

time left for looking after the common affairs of so—

ciety -- the direction of labor, affairs of state,

legal matters, art, science, etc. -- so long was it

always necessary that there should exist a special

class, freed from actual labor, to manage these af-

fairs....0nly the immense increase of the productive

forces attained through large-scale industry made it

possible to distribute labor among all members of so-

ciety without exception, and thereby to limit the

labor time of each individual member to such an extent

that all have enough free time left to take part in

the general -- both theoretical and practical -— af-

fairs of society.1

In the final analysis, Engels' contribution to the teaching on
the abolition of the division of labor contradicted the discussion
of man's inequalities, unless we assume that he was following.Adam
Smith's approach to the diversity of human talents and was including
a particularly Marxist addition. That is, although man's individual-
ity meant a diversity of talents, in a non—alienated society there
would be one talent that would be common to all despite individual-
ity - namely, the social talent, for man is by nature social, ac-
cording to Narxism, and his highest existence is "the real enjoyment
of social existence."2
Eut Engels is not clear about how it would be possible for all

men to participate in community affairs. Marx had stressed the need
for managers to control the production processes and had suggested

that social controls of a less technical nature would wither away.

Even discipline over labor within the process of production itself

 

1 Anti-Dfihring, p. 204.

2 Economic and Philosophic manuscripts, pp. 104-105.

 

68

was expected to "become superfluous under a social system in which
the laborers work for their own account."1 As for crime, in commun-
ist society it would be unlikely because the overwhelming majority
of persons would understand that the society permitted each man to
fulfill his need for self-activity. Criminals, when they did exist,
would not be punished. Instead, the criminal himself would recogn-
nize his transgression and would desire to inflict punishment upon
himself. At this point the society would step in to Save him from
he sentence he had pronounced on himself:

A penal theory that at the same time sees in the criminal
the man can do so only in abstraction, in imagination, pre—
cisely because punishment, coercion, is contrary to human
conduct. Besides, this would be impossible to carry out.
Pure subjective arbitrariness would take the place of ab-
stract law because it would always depend on official
"honest and decent" men to adapt the penalty to the indi-
viduality of the criminal. Plato admitted that the law
must be one—sided, and must make abstraCtion of the indi~
vidual. On the other hand, under human conditions punish-
ment will really be nothing but the sentence passed by the
culprit himself. There will be no attempt to persuade him
that violence from without, exerted on him by others, is
violence exerted on himself by himself. On the contrary,
he will see in other men his natural saviours from the
sentence which he has pronounced on himself; in other
words the relation will be reversed.2

Thus, although Marx was able to conceive of crime and criminals "under
human conditions," he posited a society that could tolerate criminals
without repressive controls against them. The only communal affairs
remaining would be controls over the economy. Indeed, according to

Engels' famous statement, the only work remaining for public servants

—_

1 Qapital, Vol. III, p. 100.

2 The Holy Family, pp. 238-239-

 

 

69

would be "the administration of things and the direction of the pro-
cess of production."1

In our orchestra analogy, it was one of the conductor's func-
tions to interpret the composer's intentions. Similarly, it would
be the manager's task to interpret society's needs. In any complex
industrial society this involves policy-making since it is impossible
to divorce policy from administration.2 This is of Special import-
ance to Marxism because the outline of the future society indicated
that less technical aSpects of community affairs would disappear.
Hence the notion of all men participating in communal affairs be—
comes rather utOpian when given concrete meaning in Harxism's own
terms. Marx's recognition of the need for managers implied that tech-
nical functions would be in the hands of those who had the talent to
fulfill such roles and who would be chosen through democratic pro-
cedures. The problem of administrative policy-making was one that
Marx ignored deepite the fact that he suggested the disappearance of
all other policy-making, because he felt that the interests and
therefore the policies of the administrators would, as with everyone,
coincide with the common interest. Engels, on the other hand, said
that all men would participate in community affairs, thus ignoring
the fact that decisions on those affairs would necessarily involve

technical competence.

2 Paul H. Appleby shows this in detail in Policy and Admin-
istration, University of Alabama Press, 1949.

70

CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION: MIRXISM AND THE CLASSICS

The philosophers must become kings in our cities, or those who
are now called kings and potentstes must learn to seek wisdom like
true and genuine philosophers, and so political power and intellect-
ual wisdom will be Joined in one....Until that happens there can be‘
no rest from troubles for the cities, and for the whole human race.

- Plate, Republic, 1.73.

In this concluding chapter we would like to tie together the
preceding discussion and note some of the problems it raises for po-
litical philosophy. This shall be done primarily by contrasting
Marxism with classical political philosophy. While admittedly the
author of this thesis has not studied all of the major political
philosophies since classical antiquity, up to this point in his in-
tellectual development the only philosophical system among those he
is familiar with that he finds capable of raising serious arguments
against Marxism is that of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

The ensuing discussion shall not sttanpt to reach conclusions
about whether or not the arguments raised by the classics would emerge
victorious when placed side by side with those of. Marfism. This shall
not be done, not because we are unwilling to commit ourselves to a
philosophical position, but because the present level of scholarship
of the author permits him to present the classical position only in
a. very sketchy outline. The discussion shall instead proceed pri-
marily from the author's impression that there is e need to distinguish

between sound arguments that ought to be made by those who accept

71

the classical approach and other arguments that appear to be unten-
able because they reflect an incomplete understanding of Marxism.
Let us begin by looking at two instances in which Marxism di-
rectly discussed arguments of the classics. It was Marx himself who
recognized a certain kinship between his approach to economics and
that of the classics. He noted the striking contrast between the
capitalistic desire to accumulate, i.e. the attitude of "accentua—
tion of quantity and exchange-value" and the ClaSSiCal position, i.e.
"quality and use—value." He recognized that the division of labor

posited in Plato's Republic was a consequence of "the various bents

 

and talents of men" and of the classical position that "without some
restraint no important results can be obtained anywhere."l In‘flhg
German Ideology, Marx and Engels mentioned pre-Capitalist notions of
the division of labor in which productive labor was thought of as a
subordinate node of self-activity —- subordinate because of "the
narrowness of the individuals themselves."2 Marx's interpretation of
the Socratic—Platonic economic system was that its division of labor
deve10ped from the multifarious requirements and the limited capaci-
ties of individuals. "Hence," he noted, "both product and producer
are improved by division of labor."3 Nevertheless, Harx's apparent
approval of this system was dissolved when he suggested that the end

of alienation involved the capacity of all men to engage in creative

1 Capital, Vol. I, p. 365.
2 The German Ideology, p. 66.

3 Ca ital, Vol. I, p. 365, note 4.

 

 

 

72

activity. The classical writers believed that men were unequally
endowed with the ability to reason and therefore their reaction to a
suggestion that the antithesis between physical and mental labor be
abolished might have been that this would make many members of the
polls into worse men. Narx's characterization of the Socratic-
Platonic division of labor was in purely economic terms. With Plato,
said Harx, the division of society into classes was based on the di-
vision of labor. It was "merely the Athenian idealization of the
Egyptian system of Castes," where Egypt had been used as a model be-
cause her castes were founded on the knowledge "that they who change
their occupations become skilled in none but that those who con-
stantly stick to one occupation bring it to the highest perfection."l
This view of the Socratic-Platonic society omitted mentioning that
the classics believed some men were by nature better equipped to
strive for social virtue than others because of natural differences
as well as differences caused by good and bad upbringing. Their
division of society into classes was based on the assertion that
"some men need guidance by others, whereas others do not at all or
to a much lesser degree." Consequently, it wrs right for some men
to be the rulers of others and the best regime of the classical
writers, i.e. the "utOpia" for which they would wish or pray, con-
sisted of the absolute rule of the wise, where wisdom was synonymous
with understanding how society must be organized if each man were to

be able to lead a just life.2 Harx rejected these ideas on the

1 Ibid., pp. 365-366 and notes.

2 Strauss, Natural Right and History, pp. 138-141.

 

73

ground that all prior notions of morality, justice and virtue only
reflected the level of material develOpment of the productive forces
and that classical political philOSOphy was, generally, an ideology
either of the Athenian state or of slave society generally. This is
one ground on which the arguments of classical scholars might origin-
ate.

harxism also presented another teaching of classical political
phi1030phy, however incompletely, by suggesting that the highest rea-
son for the defense of class differences had always been that "there
must be a class which need not plague itself with the production of
its daily subsistence, in order that it may have time to look after
the intellectual work of society."1 This interpretation omitted

that part of the classical position that contains the teaching that
while the simply best regime would be the absolute rule of the wide,
for practical purposes the best regime would be the rule of gentlemen.
It was not so much because of their wealth that gentlemen were held
to be able to look after the affairs of society. Primarily it was
because they were held to be better able to appreciate virtuous, just
and noble behavior than the majority of men.2 In contrast with Marx
and Engels, the classics taught that only a few men could attain this
level; that there was something in the nature of man that prevented
many of them from reaching it and that material abundance was not

simply the answer because if it were achieved most men would indulge

-_‘

l Engels, The Housing Question, p. 30.

2 Strauss, Natural Right and History, pp. 142-143.

'74

in vulgar, rather than noble and creative pursuits. "To honor riches
and at the same time to acquire enough temperance," said Plato's
Socrates, "is impossible."1 This is another ground on which class—
ical scholars may want to challenge Marxism.

Nevertheless, a great deal of criticism of lbrxism, not only
by classical scholars but also by non—Marxist liberals, defeats its
own purpose because of a failure to appreciate the nature of the
philos0phy that is being attacked.

Marxism is the most Optimistic of social theories. It rejected
the approach of 18th century natural right philOSOphy in which a con-
cept of natural freedom and equality at the dawn of human history was
made to imply that leadership should depend on democratic institu-
tions, in favor of an approach in which all men were qualified to
choose their leaders -- perhaps to be leaders -- because of their
rationality. Consequently, Marxism also challenged the teaching of
classic natural right, but it had in common with the classics an em-
phasis on reason and man's natural sociality. In contrast with the
classics, Marx asserted that the members of the working class would,
as a result of the material progress of the history of civilization,
attain enough rationality to understand the historical role of their
class and subsequently to select their representatives through the
democratic process. To this, Engels added that each man would par-
ticipate in community affairs. Marxism posited an economic organiza-
tion that permitted the antithesis between mental and physical labor

to be superseded and that sharply curtailed the time that must be

L

1'Re ublic, 5550-

 

75

taken up by work. If this took place, man would be able to eXpress
his creative nature in self—activity and therefore there would no
longer be any tension betWeen men's individual interests and the
common interest. Political problems -- insofar as these represented
the tensions of the class struggle -- would vanish, and social con-
trols would remain in the economic Sphere only, i.e. the administra-
tion of goods in the automated economy of abundance and the control
over production that would entail a minimum level of direction of

the working man during the few hours that it would be necessary for
him to contribute his time to the community. Furthermore, what ap-
pears to be the obligation of each man to contribute "according to
his ability," is not an obligation that would, in a truly human so-
ciety, encounter any resistance. The end of alienation meant the end
of the conflict between the individual and the common interests. The
individual would therefore contribute according to his ability simply
because he would be a "human being igflpggd‘gg a totality of human

life-activities."l

The end of alienation means that we must not in-
terpret the slogan, "From each according to his abilities, to each
according to his needs," as referring to the contribution that an in—
dividual must make as a prerequisite for his sharing in the social
product. Rather, the first and second phrases of this slogan are
identical. There would no longer be any difference between abilities

and needs. we would have a situation in which the fulfilling of

one's needs would become the contribution according to one‘s abilities.

 

1 Economic and PhilOSOphic Manuscripts, p. 111, emphasis in
original.

76

Consequently, in a non-alienated society all work would be cre-
ative work and all men would lead a life of creativity and contempla-
tion. Yet Marx and Engels also noted inequalities in human intelli-
gence and even implied on occasion that these inequalities were
natural. They conceived of the abolition of classes, (i.e. the owner-
ship of the means of production and their products by the entire com-
munity for the planned production of use values, rather than their
ownership by one class for its own enrichment at the eXpense of an-
other), without conceiving of the abolition of all inequality. But
though harx and Engels said that human differences cannot be, or even
should not be, done away with, they appear to have contradicted their
own recognition of human differences when they suggested that once the
community owned the means of production it would be possible to build
a society in which all men would be brotherly, moral and rational so
that separate institutions for the prescription of virtuous conduct,
as well as punishment for transgressions, would wither away.

The kind of social organiZation envisioned would begin to come
into being after an inevitable social revolution by the working class
-- inevitable because the rate of capitalist profit would fall to
such a degree that either economic crises would become increasingly
severe or perpetual misery and stagnation would exist. The revolu-
tion, they asserted, would lead to the abolition of all classes.

The notion of consciousness and the unity of theory and practice
made Marx and Engels practical revolutionaries as well as theoretical
social scientists and philosophers. The unity of theory and prac-

tice made it possible for them to "wear two hats," as it were -- in

77

their role as theoreticians, to predict the inevitability of the revo-
lution; then, in their role as revolutionaries, to work for its
achievement, all of this work being guided by their certainty that
from misery would emerge truly human morality. Their work for revo-
lution was not thought to be inhumane by them, because the capitalist
system was held to be so inhumane and because the revolution was ex—
pected to lead to the end of all degradation.

If this characterization of Narxism is correct, it is not quite
sufficient to describe harx and Engels as Machiavellian.l One pos-
sible reason they might be so characterized is that Machiavelli did
not rule out violence and bloodshed from the actions of princes. How-
ever, his pragmatic methods included no absolute standards of justice
in which, perhaps, an unjust status quo could be thought to justify
violations of what are normally held to be moral acts. In contrast,
Marxism posited revolution because of a situation that‘Was unjust from
the point of view of its understanding of the potentialities of human
nature. Man had been reduced to a fragment of his real self deepite
the fact that, according to Marxism, the pre-conditions existed for
that real self to emerge. Revolution would lead from extreme misery
to the best kind of social existence man had ever known.

The central point of Machiavelli's critique of morality was
that the classics were utOpian, since they described their best regime
in the idealistic terms of virtue. Machiavelli revolutionized po-

litical philOSOphy by taking his bearings not by virtue but by the

 

1 Leo Strauss so characterizes Marx. See What Is Political
.Ehilosophy? Glencoe, Ill., 1959, The Free Press, p. 41.

 

78

interests and passions of all men. He taught what he considered to
be a new kind of justice that rested on an immoral foundation, 1.6.
the prince's passion for glory. Marx and Engels could be termed
Machiavellian insofar as they rejected classical idealism and also
took their bearings by men's interests, in their case the material
interests of socio—economic classes. But, since they conceived of
these interests in their historical materialist fashion they were not,
like Nachiavelli, conventionalists who believed that virtue was noth-
ing more than the interest of the prince. Nachiavelli believed all
morality was conventional. Marx accepted this view, however, only
for all "hitherto existing society." Hegelian historicism, with its
absolute moment in which absolute truth became knowable, was made
compatible with the materialist approach by the suggestion that know-
ledge of absolute truth depended upon the material growth of the pro—
ductive forces. Marx and Engels had very clearly empressed notions
of how men ought to conduct themselves and they suggested that a time
would come when they would do so sppntaneously; that if class antago-
nisms were superseded no social controls would be necessary to en-
force this kind of behavior. It would appear that those who have
adOpted the classical political philosophers as their teachers have a
very strenuous argument to pose against Marxism, but I think it is
not precisely accurate to equate historical materialism with
Machiavellianism.

Harx and Engels proceeded from a Machiavellian (as well as a
Hobbesian) foundation to something higher, but perhaps incorrect.

Whereas 18th century natural right Was closer to Machiavelli‘s teach-

v. 35-3" “

79

ing in resting civil morality on a conventional base, Marxism.was a
natural right philosophy that restored the classical notions of man's
natural sociality, rationality and a morality based upon teleological
concepts of life most apprOpriate to human nature -- while at the
same time it suggested that history had established the pre-condi-
tions for transcending material interests, actualizing the good,

and ending what it termed alienation; consequently, for uniting the
former Opposition between wisdom and consent.

Mhrxism's historical materialist approach led to an unusually
Optimistic view of human nature and human potentialities and an un-
willingness to accept anything short Of the non-alienated life that
was believed to be within the reach of men. Because of Marxism's
unusually Optimistic - and perhaps therefore inaccurate -- view of
human nature, it was radical, i.e. critical of everything that ex~
isted. It is on the grounds of its Optimistic philOSOphy of human
nature that it ought to be criticized by Ola sisal scholars and these
are grounds tlat Open the door to an avalanche of criticism.

Marxism began with Machiavellian premises and then transcended
them by suggesting that true notions of morality could be actualized
from a materialist basis. In a sense Harxism is a merger -- perhaps an
unsuccessful one -- of Hashiavellian and idealistic principles.
Criticism of the validity of the synthesis it suggested would be
fruitful in the attempt to achieve better understanding of the funda-
mental problems of political philOSOphy. Since my main effort is to
achieve that kind of understanding, I have tried to outline these argu-

ments, having undertaken, for the purposes of this concluding chapter,

80

a rough case study of two contrasting philOSOphies that vie‘ for

L.)

I

acceptance by thoughtful persons. Criticism of harxism should be
based on the attempt to demonstrate that its understanding of man's
nature and man's potentialities is in error, rather than on the
illusory ground that Marxism contains no absolute moral conceptions.
On the contrary, its faith in the ability of man to be moral and

noble dominated both the theoretical writings and the practical

activity.

81

BIBLIOGRAPH
A. MARXIST COLLECTIONS

[Karl Harx and Friedrich Engels, Selected works, 2 vols. New York,
undated, International Publishers.

Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, New York, 1942, Inter-
national Publishers.

marx, Selected Essays, London, 1926, Leonard Parsons.

Harx, Letters to Kfifielmann, New York, 1934, International Publishers.

Harx and Engels, Letters to Americans, New York, 1953, International
Publishers.

‘Zbrx and Engels, On Religion, Moscow, 1957, Foreign Languages Pub-
1ishing House.

Narx and Engels, On Britain, Moscow, 1953, Foreign Languages Publish-
ing House.

B. IERKIST WRITINGS
(in approximate order of original publication)

Marx, "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's PhilOSOphy of Right,
Introduction," in Harx and Engels, On Religion (above).

,Narx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Roscow, 1959,
Foreign Languages Publishing House.

Engels, "Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy," appendix to
Marx, Economic and Philos0phic Manuscripts of 1844, (above).

/Engels, Conditions of the Norking Class in England in 1844, New
York, 1948, The Macmillan Company, (another translation, perhaps
more acceptable to some scholars appears in Marx and Engels, 9n

Britain, above).

Marx and Engels, he Holprnmily, Moscow, 1956, Foreign Languages
Publishing House.

,flbrx and Engels, he German Ideology, New York, 1947, International

Publishers.

Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, London, undated, Martin Lawrence,
Ltd.

 

 

 

82

Marx, Eggs Labor and Capital, Hescow, 1954, Foreign.lenguages Pub-
lishing House.

Marx and Engels, anifesto of the Communist Party, New York, 1948,
International Publishers.

Engels, The Peasant Nar in Germany, New York, 1926, International
Publishers.

Lhrx, The Class Struggles in France, Moscow, 1952, Foreign Languages
Publishing House.

Hark and Engels, Revolution or CounteréRevolution, London, 1952,
George Allen and Unwin Ltd.

Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, New York, undated,
International Publishers.

Marx, g Contribution to the Critigue of Political Econogy, Chicago,
1904, Charles H. Kerr and Co.

lhrx, Ca ital, 3 vols. Chicago, 1909, Charles H. Kerr and Co. (Identi-
cal translation available as Moscow, 1954, Foreign Languages Pub-

lishing House.)

Harx, wages, Price and Profit, Moscow, 1952, Foreign Languages Pub-
lishing House.

Marx, The Civil war in France, Moscow, 1952, Foreign Languages Pub-
lishing House.

Engels, The Housing#Question, New York, undated, International Pub-
liSheI‘S o

Marx, Critique of the Gotha PrOgramme, Mbscow, 1954, Foreign Languages
Publishing House.

LEngels, Dialectics of Nature, New York, 1940, International Publishers.

ngels, Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science, (AntiéDuhring),
London, 1934, Lawrence and dishart Ltd.

Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,
Moscow, undated, Foreign Languages Publishing House.

Engels, LgdwigpFeuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Phil—
osoghy, Moscow, 1950, Foreign Languages Publishing House.

Engels, The Peasant Question in France and Germany, Mbscow, 1955,
Foreign Languages Publishing House.

83
C. OTHER RELEVANT WORKS
Plato, Re ublic, in Great Dialogues of Plato (trans. N. H. D. House),

New York, 1956, Mentor Books.

/firistotle, Politics, (trans. B. Jowett), New York, 1943, The Modern
Library.

Nachiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses, (trans. Luigi Ricci,
rev. E. R. P. Vincent), New York, 1940, The modern Library.

ZRosseau, The Social Contract and Discourses (trans. G. D. H. Cole),
New York, 1950, E. P. Dutton and Co.

Lenin, Whatgl§ To Be Done? Fbscow, 1952, Foreign Languages Publish-
ing House.

,Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism and On the Problems of Leninism
(combined, 1 vol.§, Moscow, 1950, Foreign Languages Publishing
House.

Paul H. Appleby, Policy and Administration, University of Alabama
Press, 1949.

,Sblomon Frank Bloom, The World of nations, New York, 1940, Columbia
University Press.

Haurice Dobb, Political Economygand Capitalism, New York, 1939,
International Publishers.

Raye Dunayevskaya, Marxism and Freedom, New York, 1958, Bookman
Associates.

Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, New York, 1955, Rinehart and 00., Inc.

LeOpold H. Haimson, The Russian Narxists and the Origins of Bolshevism,
Cambridge, bbss., 1955, Harvard University Press.

Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, New York, 1954, The Humanities
Press.

Herbert Narcuse, Eros and Civilization, Boston, 1955, The Beacon Press.

Alfred G. Neyer, Harxism, Cambridge, th3., 1954, Harvard University
Press.

,Klfred G. Meyer, Leninism, Cambridge, Fhss., 1957, Harvard University
Press.

84
Leo S rauss, Natural Right and History, C11icago, l0 53, University of
Chicago Press.

Leo Strauss, What Is 901w mo 1 P1111080 4m? Glencoe, 111., 1959,
The Free Press.

Paul M. Sweezy, The Theogy of Cgpitalist Development, Iew York,
1942, Oxford University Press.

 

Vernon Venable, Human Nature: The Marxist View, New York, 1946,
Alfred A. KnOpf.

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