Karl Marx, Friedrich List, and Revolution in the 20th Century - Part 2
The following first appeared on ‘Howard’s Substack’ and is syndicated with the permission of the author.
The first instalment of an essay on Friedrich List and Karl Marx, which views their work in light of the revolutionary tumult of the 20th centur
Nationalism and the Crisis of Classical Marxism
"How . . . could Marx, who was such an acute observer of contemporary history as well as a social theorist of genius, have been so theoretically unconcerned about one of the dominant political phenomena of nineteenth-century Europe, and apparently blind to its significance for world history?" - Zbigniew Pełczyński
Brimming with theoretical rigour, finding itself in an epoch of collapsing values, and buttressed in virtually every major occidental metropole by a confident, organised labour movement which was capable of bringing the national economy, owing to its reliance on factories for commodity production, to a halt - Marxism was poised to play a defining, if not the definitive role in shaping the 20th century. Yet the proletariat never seized power in the West (or in the East). Nor did many of Marx's economic predictions come to fruition, in turn engendering discourse and division between orthodox and revisionist camps - see: Eduard Bernstein's Evolutionary Socialism. Finally, Nationalism had proven to be less fickle than Marx imagined; it represented a competitor, capable of accruing the loyalty of the masses.
Marx's myopic perspective on nationalism, evidenced in the preceding section as an outgrowth of his worldview, was shared by many of his contemporaries - Szporluk:
"Marx and virtually all of his contemporaries, regardless of whether they were left or right politically, shared his myopia about nationalism. They failed to notice that it had already become a major force that mobilized the masses around its goals and ideals. Even when Marx actually took note of nationalism, which he did in his response to List, for example, he did not appreciate that it was more than an intellectual or political current. As we shall see, nationalism was changing the actual social reality."
Marx's parochial view of the national question may be found in his List Critique and Communist Manifesto. A markedly more nuanced, self-effaced approach to nationality was taken in later works, such as Capital. Marx lived until 1883: the experience of 1848, the Paris Commune, Italian and German unification, and the emergence of assassination-prone antinomianism in Russia, all assisted in re-colouring his dismissal of nationality as a variable in the historical process.
Though his 1845 List Critique had emphasised the weakness of the German bourgeoisie, with its programme of nationalist capitalism, and the concomitant strength of the proletariat, events three years subsequent proved otherwise. In 1848, revolutions swept Europe, including the German-speaking statelets. The revolution in Germany was charged with the spirit of national-unification; it sought the creation of constitutional limits on power and enshrined civil liberties. Though comprising the breadth of the social order, the revolutionary vanguard was thoroughly bourgeois.
The palpable expression of bourgeois nationalism in 1848 contrasts with Marx's characterisation of the bourgeois and proletariat in the List Critique:
"It is truly sadder that the proletariat already exists and already advances claims, and already inspires fear, before the German bourgeois has yet achieved the development of industry. As far as the proletarian himself is concerned, he will certainly find his social situation a happy one when the ruling bourgeoisie has a full exchequer and national might. Herr List only speaks about what is sadder for the bourgeois. And we admit that for him it is very sad that he wants to establish the domination of industry precisely at the unsuitable moment when the slavery of the majority resulting from this domination has become a generally known fact. The German bourgeois is the knight of the rueful countenance, who wanted to introduce knight-errantry just when the police and money had come to the fore."
The Paris Commune, more nakedly proletarian than the revolutions of 1848, nevertheless possessed a nationalistic ethos that ran contrary to Marx's perspective in the 1840s. The highly reputed Marxist scholar Eric Hobsbawm noted that the ideology of the Commune's standard bearer's owed, in part at least, to the patriotism of the Jacobins.
Likewise, the expression of German nationalism in 1848 nourished the revolutionaries of the SPD, such as Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel - the latter of whom received ample praise by Oswald Spengler in Prussianism and Socialism. Patriotism was a characteristic of the rank and file:
"Hobsbawm points out that German workers resented charges that they were unpatriotic; they were 'not only workers but good Germans'."
At the intermediate stage, as has been shown, Marx and Engels arrived at the dyad of historical versus non-historical peoples, signifying an increased emphasis on nationality as a variable in their analysis. Marx's Capital represented a further shift in his approach to nationality, with Marx suggesting that capitalism could develop along national lines.
"One nation can and should learn from others. And even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement—and it is the ultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the economic laws of motion of modern society—it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development. But it can shorten and lessen the birthpangs."
The foregoing extract, cited from Marx's preface to Capital, is crucial from the perspective of the Norwegian philosopher, Jon Elster, who contends that it implies:
"the model of unique development, modified only by the possibility that the latecomers may spend less time in the successive stages than did the pioneers."
Marx went further in his preface to the second Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto, wherein he cited the Mir community, characterised by communal organisation of landholding, taxation and self-government, as a form from which socialism could emerge in Russia - crucially, he noted that extant communal ownership, a factor absent in the West after the enclosure of the land, opened the possibility of establishing socialism without Russia having to undergo a capitalist phase. In looking to the Mir as a basis for the gestation of socialism in Russia, Marx was anticipated by the Russian socialist Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky.
As an aside, Aodh De Blacam, in What Sinn Féin Stands For, took stock of Marx's comments, arguing that it constituted an admission that economic evolution differed between nations; universal, standardised development lacked veracity, he argued. Upon this premise, he surveyed Irish history and society, concluding that civic associations conditioned the populace in a fashion analogous to the Mir community vis-à-vis the rural peasantry - this, in turn, led him to arrive at a normative socio-economic vision which respected private property and social justice:
"The communal instinct is strong in Ireland, partly through national tradition, partly, perhaps, through religion, and partly through the absence of capitalistic development. Feudalism never was adopted by the nation: introduced as the weapon of foreign ascendancy, it was always resented and rebelled against. The communal instinct finds its principal expression in fervent patriotism, in enthusiasm for leagues, associations and societies, and — be it allowed — in a regrettable clannishness and parochialism in the more isolated districts. The idealist believes that the communal instinct, tradition and customs can be given a satisfying and desirable form of expression in the establishment of democratic industry, and the medium relied on is the cooperative movement. Further, it is believed that Ireland has an historic mission to fulfil in hammering out, through cooperation, a social order that shall harmonise the communal or social spirit with the rights of individuals and the preservation of private property."
Returning to the central point of this section: the certitude that imbued Marx's historical materialism attenuated in later years, giving way to an opaque, reticent admission of nationalism's potency, as well as lending credulity to the prospect of a multiplicity of paths toward development. Letters from Engels to Josef Bloch and Conrad Schmidt in 1890, and later to Heinz Starkenburg in 1894, suggest a retreat by Marx's aide-de-camp from the premium he once placed on the role of economics in history.
These letters were readily cited by Eduard Bernstein, perhaps the most influential reformist in the tradition of Marxism. Originally Engels' protégé, Bernstein's Problems of Socialism represented a rupture with "orthodox" Marxism - A. James Gregor states:
"Bernstein took all of Engels' remarks to warrant a thorough review and reinterpretation of the entire collection of Marxist propositions. Bernstein advocated a searching and detailed reconsideration not only of Marx's philosophical views, his methodological commitments, his economic conceptions, his empirical generalizations, and his predictions, but a reappraisal of the role of ideal and/ or moral factors in individual and collective political behaviors"
If Marxism was a science, he averred, then its postulates subsisted inasmuch as they possessed empirical veracity. The immiseration of the proletariat had not occurred; the workers expressed fidelity to their nation; the petit-bourgeois and other assorted intermediate groupings were extant; class war had not occurred in industrial, urbanised societies to the degree predicted. From its methodology to its predictions, Bernstein judged Marxism to be wanting. He therefore concluded that reform, theoretical and praxis-wise, was imperative.
Reform, however, was not a panacea. Critics aptly noted the tension between fidelity to the Marxist tradition and evolutionary socialism of the Bernstein-variety. Marxism, shorn of the base-superstructure dyad, scientific pretence, and commitment to class war, devolved into the very utopian, normative socialism which Marx and Engels had condemned so vociferously in their polemics.
Two further issues emerged as a consequence of reform. Firstly, scepticism regarding the role of the proletariat; shorn of the conceptual wherewithal which privileged economic actors (contrast the false consciousness of religious and national subjects, from the perspective of Orthodox Marxism), the proletariat's claim ineluctably depreciated. The proletarian became merely one actor among others, each of whom advanced their claim; no longer was he destined to deliver humanity into a new age, the final age - the millenarian dream was finished. Emile Durkheim put it best:
"Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain"
Secondly, reform represented a reconciliation, in actual terms, with the institutions of bourgeois society: parliamentarianism, conciliatory arbitration with the captains of industry, electioneering, and other assorted sordidity. Anarchism, a foe since the time of Bakunin, if not Proudhon, of Marxism, would be granted a monopoly on violence.
Conceptually heterodox and reformist, yet the most vociferous celebrator of violent proletarian insurrection, Georges Sorel embodies the idiosyncrasies of early 20th century Marxism. His magisterial Reflections on Violence contains a trenchant critique of the political aims of the reformists - their object, he contended, would result in a combination between an accentuated state, a devitalised bourgeoisie, and a voiceless proletarian represented by socialist party and labour union middle-men; the latter's role as intermediaries would be coveted by the incumbents, and in turn would jettison their revolutionary potential.
Such was the state that Marxism found itself in at the beginning of the 20th century.