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Ingo Elbe October 21, 2013

Between Marx, Marxism, and Marxisms Ways of Reading

Marxs Theory

The objective of the f ollowing observations is to of f er a rough overview of central ways of reading Marxs

theory. These are to be presented by means of a f ew selected topics as Marxisms that can be relatively

clearly delimited f rom one another, and the history of their reception and inf luence will be evaluated with

regard to t he common-sense understanding of Marxist theory.

A dist inction will be made between t he hitherto predominant interpretation of Marx, primarily associated with

political parties (traditional Marxism, Marxism in the singular, if you will), and the dissident, critical fo rms of

reception of Marx (Marxisms in the plural), with t heir respective claims of a return to Marx. The f irst inter

pretation is understood as a product and process of a restricted reading of Marx, in part emerging f rom the

exoteric layer o f Marxs work, which updates traditional paradigms in political economy, the theory of his

tory, and philosophy. Systematized and elevated to a doctrine by Engels, Kautsky, et al, it succumbs to the

mystif ications o f the capitalist mode of production and culminates in the apologetic science of Marxism-

Leninism. The other two interpretations, specif ically Western Marxism as well as the German neue Marx-

Lektre (new reading of Marx), usually explore the esoteric content o f Marxs critique and analysis of

society, of ten consummated outside of institut ionalized, cumulative research programs, by iso lated actors

in the style of an underground Marxism.

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In order to characterize both ways of reading, some strongly truncated theses, limited to a few aspects ,

must suf f ice. In particular the ambitious proposition, f irst f ormulated by Karl Korsch, of an application of

the materialist conception o f history to the materialist conception o f history itself one that goes beyond

the mere presentation of intellectual history, towards an immanent theoretical critique that critically consid

ers the connection between histo rical forms of praxis and theoretical f ormations o f Marxism cannot be

carried out here. In addition, a consideration of tho se readings which are critical of Marx or Marxism can

also be disregarded here, insof ar as their picture of Marx usually corresponds to that o f traditional

Marxism.

I theref ore begin with the hegemonic interpretative model of traditional Marxism, and only at the end of my

presentation will I conclude with a f ew positive determinations o f what I regard as the fundamental system

atic intention o f Marxs work. I do this primarily because a dif f erentiated reading of Marxs work can only be

gained in the course o f the learning processes of Western Marxism and the neue Marx-Lektre.

I. Marxism

The term Marxism was probably f irst used in the year 1879 by the German Social Democrat Franz Mehring

to characterize Marxs t heory, and established itself at the end of the 1880s as a discursive weapon used

by both critics and defenders o f Marxs t eachings. The birth o f a Marxist schoo l, however, is unanimously dated back to the publication o fAnti-Dhringby Friedrich Engels in the year 1878, and the subse

quent reception of this work by Karl Kautsky, Eduard Berstein, et al. Engels writings even if the terms

Marxism or dialectical materialism, the self- applied labels of traditional readings, do not yet appear in

them supplied entire generations o f readers, Marxists as well as ant i-Marxists , with the interpretat ive

model thro ugh which Marxs work was perceived. In part icular, the review of Marxs Contribution to the Cri

tique of Political Economy(1859), the late work Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philoso

phy(1886), and the supplement to Volume III of Capital(1894/95), achieved an inf luence that can hardly be

underest imated. Above all, however, it wasAnti-Dhringthat was to be stylized as the textbook of Marxist

theory as well as a posit ive depiction o f a Marxist worldview: f or Kautsky, there is no o ther boo k that has

cont ributed so much to the understanding of Marxism. Marxs Capitalis greater. But it was f irst through

Anti-Dhringthat we learned to correctly read and understand Capital. And for Lenin, it is one of the hand

books of every class-conscious worker.1

At the same time, a general characteristic of the history of Marxism is consummated: the init iators of the

theoretical corpus regard it as unnecessary [] to themselves make an appearance as eponyms [] the

eponyms are not the real speakers. In many respects , Marxism is Engels work and for that reason actually

an Engelsism. In what follows I will name only two po ints which an ideologized and restricted reception of

Marx could draw upon.

I.1 The Ontological-Determinist Tendency

Scientif ic socialism was conceived of as an onto logical system, a science of the big picture. The material

ist dialectic functions here as a general law of development o f nature, society, and thought,2 while nature

serves f or Engels as a proof of dialectics.3 Engels already undertakes a f alse analogy between historical-

social processes and natural phenomena by the mere fact that in his elucidation of the main features o f

the dialectic, ref erence to subject and object is missing. Negation o f the negation or t he transf ormation

of quantity into quality are identif ied in the changes in the physical state o f water or in the development of

a grain of barley. Against a s tat ic point o f view, dialectic is supposed to demonstrate the becoming, the

transitory character of all existence,4 and is bound to t raditional dichotomies of the philosophy of con

sciousness, such as the so-called great basic question of all philosophy as to which component o f the

relationship between thinking and being has primacy.5 The dialectic is split into two sets of laws, into the

dialectic of the external world and the dialectic of human thought, whereby the latter is understood to be

merely a pass ive mental image of the f ormer.6 Engels constricts even disto rts the three elementary

praxis- philoso phical mot if s of Marx, which he had partially st ill advocated in his earlier writings:

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1. The recognition that not only the object, but also the observation of the object is historically and

practically mediated,7 not external to the histo ry of the mode of production. Against this, Engels

emphasizes that the materialist out look on nature means nothing more than the simple conception

of nature just as it is, without alien addition.8 The naive realism of the theory of ref lection system

atized by Lenin9 and others which falls prey to the reif ied appearance of immediacy of that which is

socially mediated, the f etishism of an in- itself of that which exists only via a historically determined

f ramework of human activity already obtains its f oundation in Engels writings.10 As things refer to

consciousness and consciousness ref ers to things,11

the concepts o f praxis and the subjectivemediation of the object, as well as ideology-critical cons iderations, have hardly any place in this

paradigm.

2. The concept of Naturwchsigkeit(the state o f being naturally derived), which Engels had used in

The German Ideologyin a negative sense, is now turned into a positive concept. The sublation of spe

cific social laws resting upon the unconsciousness o f social acto rs is no longer postulated; rather,

Engels pos tulates the conscious application of the general laws of mot ion [] of the external

world.12

3. If Marx writes in the Theses on Feuerbach that all mysteries which lead theory to mysticism f ind their

rational so lution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice,13 Engels reduces

praxis to the experimental activity o f the natural sciences.14 Admittedly, ambivalences and praxis-

philosophical mot ifs can also be found in the writings o f the late Engels, which were largely blot ted

out by the epigones. Nonetheless, Engels, bundling together the scientism of his epoch, paves the

way f or a mechanist ic and fatalistic conception of historical materialism by shif ting the accent f rom a

theory of social praxis to one of a contemplative, ref lection-theory doctrine of development.

The vulgar evolutionism of nineteenth- century European Social Democracy is a nearly ubiquitous phenome

non.15 For t hat reason, it is not just f or Kautsky, Bernstein, and Bebel that t he deterministic concept o f

development and the revolutionary metaphysic of a providential mission of the proletariat16 occupy a cen

tral place in Marxist doct rine. Accordingly, humanity is subordinated to a scientif ically verif iable auto matism

of liberation. That which presents itself in the modern scientif ic garb of a fetishism of laws is ultimately

nothing other than a historical metaphysic with a so cialist s ignature17: precisely the inversion o f subject

and object that Marx had criticized. A process consummated behind the back of social actors is at tributed a

morally qualif ied aim.18 Ultimately, in the Erf urt Program of the German Social Democratic Party, this revolu

tionary passivity19 is codif ied at an of f icial level as cons istent Marxism: the task of the party is to remain

braced f or an event t hat will necessarily happen even without intervention, not to make the revolution,

but rather to take advantage of it.20 The ontological orientation and the encyclopaedic character of

Engels deliberations also f eed the tendency to interpret scientif ic socialism as a comprehensive proletarian

worldview. Ultimately, Lenin will present the Marxist doct rine as omnipotent, a comprehensive and harmo

nious doctrine that provides men with an integral world out look.

21

Correspondingly, the negative conceptof ideology is neutralized into a category for the determinate being of consciousness in general.

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I.2 The Historicist Interpretation of the Form-Genetic Method

If Lenins statement that none of the Marxists f or the past half century have understoo d Marx a dictum

that in this case however also applies to Lenin himself has any validity, then it is certainly with regard to

the interpretation o f the critique of political economy. Even 100 years af ter the publication of the f irst vol

ume ofCapital, Engels commentary was widely regarded as the so le legit imate and adequate assessment

of Marxs critique of economy. No reading in the Marxist tradition was as uncont roversial as the one casu

ally developed by Engels in texts such as the review of Marxs Contribution to the Critique of Political Econ

omy(1859) or the supplement to Volume III ofCapital(1894). Here, cons iderably more explicitly than in the

object ivist concept ion of historical materialism, Marxism is Engelsism.

Against the backgro und of his conception of ref lection, Engels int erprets t he f irst chapter o f Capitalas a

simultaneously logical and histo rical presentation of simple commodity production developing to ward the

relations o f capitalist wage labor, only st ripped of the historical form and diverting chance occurrences.25

The term logical in this context basically means nothing more t han simplif ied. The method of presenta

tion, the sequence of categories (commodity, the elementary, expanded, and general f orms o f value,

money, capital) in the critique of polit ical economy is accordingly simply the ref lection, in abst ract and theo

retically consist ent f orm, of the historical course.26 The examination of the genesis of the money form isunderstood as the description of an actual event which really took place at some time or o ther and not as

an abstract mental process that takes place so lely in our mind.27 In no o ther passage of his work does

Engels so drast ically reduce histo rical materialism to a vulgar empiricism and historicism, as is made evident

by his associat ive chain materialism empirically verif iable f acts real process vs. idealism abstract

thought process purely abst ract territo ry.

With the logical-histo rical method, Engels provides a catchphrase that will be recited and stressed ad nau

seam in the Marxist orthodoxy. Karl Kautsky, in his enormously inf luential presentations, understood Capital

to be an essentially historical work28: Marx was charged with recognizing capital to be a historical cate

gory and to prove its emergence in histo ry, rather than mentally constructing it.29

Rudolf Hilf erding alsoclaims that in accordance with the dialectic method, conceptual evolution runs parallel throughout with his

to rical evolution.30 Both Marxism-Leninism31 and Western Marxism32 f ollow Hilferding in this assessment.

But if the critique of political economy is interpreted as historiography, then consequentially the categories

at t he beginning must correspond directlyto empirical objects , f or example a dubious pre-capitalist commod

ity not determined by price,33 and the analysis of the f orm of value must begin with the depiction of a coinci

dental, moneyless interaction of two commodity owners with Engels so-called simple production o f com

modities,34 an economic epoch he dates f rom 6000 BC to the 15th century AD. According to this concep

tion, Marxs law of value35 operates at t imes in this epoch in a pure f orm unadulterated by the category of

price, which Engels illustrates with the f eigned example of a moneyless exchange between medieval peas

ants and artisans.

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Here we are dealing with a transparent social interrelationship between immediate producers who are at the

same time the owners o f their means of production, in which one producer labors under the watchful eye

of the other, and therefore t he peasant of the Middle Ages knew fairly accurately the labor- time required

f or the manufacture of the articles obtained by him in barter.36 Under the conditions of this natural

exchange, it is not some normative criterion that is f or him the only suitable measure for the quantitat ive

determination of the values to be exchanged,37 but rather the abst raction of a labor- time consciously and

directly measured by the actors. Neither the peasant nor t he artisan is so stupid as t o exchange unequal

quantities o f labor

38

: No o ther exchange is poss ible in the whole period of peasant natural economy thanthat in which the exchanged quantities o f commodities tend to be measured more and more according to

the amounts of labor embodied in them.39 According to Engels, the value of a commodity is determined

consciouslyby the labor, measured in time, of individual producers. In this theory o f value, money does not

play a constitutive role. On the one hand, it is an expedient and lubricant to trade that is external to value,

but on the other it serves to obscure the substance of value: suddenly, instead of exchanging according to

hours o f labor, at some point exchange is conducted by means of cows and then pieces of gold. The ques

tion of how this not ion of every commodity being its own labor-money40 can be reconciled with the condi

tions o f private production based upon the division of labor is not posed by Engels. Engels as will be elab

orated by the neue Marx-Lektre pract ices exactly what Marx criticizes in the case of the classical eco no

mists , above all Adam Smith: a projection onto t he past of the illusory notion of appropriation throughones own labor, which in f act only exists in capitalism; neglect o f the necessary connection between value

and f orm of value41; a transf ormation o f the objective equalization of unequal acts of labor consum

mated by the objective social relationship itself into a merely subjective consideration of social actors .42

Up until the 1960s, Engels theorems continued to be passed o n undisputed. Along with his f ormula (once

again taken f rom Hegel) of f reedom being the insight into necess ity, and the drawing of parallels between

natural laws and social processes, they gave sustenance to a social-technological concept o f emancipa

tion, according to the f ollowing premise: social necess ity (above all the law of value), which operates anar

chically and uncont ro lled in capitalism, will be, by means o f Marxism as a science of the objective laws o f

nature and society, managed and applied according to a plan. Not the disappearance of capitalist f orm-

determinations, but rather theiralternative use characterizes this so cialism of adjectives (t his term comes

f rom Robert Kurz) and socialist political economy.43 There is a signif icant disproportion between, on the

one hand, the emphasis upon the historical, and on the other, the absence of a histo rically specific and

socio-t heoretically ref lected concept o f economic objectivity. This is made evident by the irrelevance of the

concept of social form in the discussions of traditional Marxism, in which it is at mos t is considered to be s

a category f or ideal or marginal circumstances, but no t a const itutive characteristic of Marxs scientif ic revo

lution.44

I.3 The Critique of the Content of the State

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Engels theoret ical statements concerning the state in The Origin of the Family, Ludwig Feuerbach,Anti-

Dhring, and his critique of the Erf urt draft program of the SPD f rom 1891, constitute the source of the tra

ditional Marxist conception of the st ate. In Ludwig Feuerbach, Engels states that t he fact that all needs in

class societies are articulated through the will of the state is the formal aspect of the matter the one

which is self -evident.45 The main question o f a materialist theory o f the state, however, is what is the con

tent o f this merely f ormal will o f the individual as well as of the state and whence is this content

derived? Why is just this willed and not something else?46 The result o f this purely content-based ques

tion concerning the will of the state is f or Engels the recognition that in modern history the will of the

state is, on the whole, determined by the changing needs o f civil society, by the supremacy of this o r that

class, in the last resort, by the development of the productive forces and relations o f exchange.47 Further

more, in his deliberations in The Origin of the FamilyEngels works with universal-historical categories o nto

which modern designations like public authority are projected, and constantly assumes direct relations of

domination, immediate f orms o f class rule48 in order to explain the state, which is consequentially under

stood as a mere inst rument of the ruling class. From this content- f ixated and universal-histo rical way of

considering the state, it can be deduced that Engels loses sight o f the actually interesting question, namely

as to why the class content in capitalism takes on the specif ic fo rm of public authority.49 The personal def i

nition of class rule extracted f rom pre-capitalist social fo rmations ultimately leads to reducing the anony

mous f orm of class rule inst itutionalized in the state to a mere ideological illusion, which, in the manner ofthe theory of priestly deception, is interpreted as a product of state tactics o f deception. Engels in any

case attempts to make the class character of the state plausible by referring to plain corruption o f of f i

cials and an alliance between the government and the stock exchange.50 Nonetheless, in Engels work

there st ill exists, despite the predominance of the instrumentalist /content- f ixated perspective, an unmedi

ated coexistence between the determination of the state as the state of the capitalists and of the state

as ideal to tal capitalist .51 The last definition conceives of the state not as a too l of the bourgeoisie []

but rather as an entity of bourgeois so ciety,52 and an organisation that bourgeois society takes on in

order to support the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against t he encroach

ments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists .53 But the specific f ormal aspect of modern state

hood is not yet explained by this ref erence to f unctional mechanisms. Engels also paved the way for t hetheory o f state-monopoly capitalism.54 In the Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Program of 1891 he

writes: I am familiar with capitalist production as a so cial f orm, or an economic phase; capitalist private pro

duction being aphenomenon which in one f orm or another is encountered in that phase. What is capitalist

private production? Production by separate entrepreneurs , which is increasingly becoming an exception. Cap

italist production byjoint-stock companies is no longerprivate production but production on behalf of many

associated people. And when we pass on f rom joint-stock companies t o trusts , which dominate and monop

olise whole branches of indust ry, this puts an end not only to private production but also to planless

ness.55 Finally, inAnti-DhringEngels writes of the st ate as real to tal capitalist: The more productive

f orces it takes over into its possession, the more it actually becomes a real aggregate capitalist , the more

citizens it exploits. Here Engels reveals a limited understanding of private product ion, and a tendency toequate state planning and monopoly power with direct socializat ion,56 reinforced by his const ruction of the

f undamental contradiction and his tendency to identif y the division of labor within a factory and the division

of labor in society. Engels does no te that the transf ormation, either into joint- stock companies, or into

state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive f orces,57 but nonetheless

sees an immediate t ransition to socialism sett ing in as a result, whereas the concepts of monopoly and

state intervention remain economically completely undetermined.58 Engels thus suggests that the workers

movement merely has to t ake over the forms of corporate bookkeeping in joint-stock companies and the

comprehensive planning by mono polies developed in capitalism. For Engels, the bourgeois ie has already

become obso lete through the separation of ownership and management f unctions.59 The transformation

of the great establishments f or production and distribution into joint- stock companies and state propertydemonstrates, according to Engels, how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are f or that purpose, i.e. f or manag

ing modern productive forces: All the social functions o f the capitalist are now performed by salaried

employees. The capitalist has no f urther social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing of f

coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the dif f erent capitalists despoil one another of their

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capital. At f irst the capitalist mode of production f orces out the workers. Now it f orces out the capitalists,

and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus population, although not

immediately into tho se of the industrial reserve army.60

Reviewing this history o f reception (only roughly outlined here), one could claim that Marxism in the f orm

presented here was a rumor about Marxs t heory, a rumor t hat was gratef ully taken up by mos t critics o f

Marx and merely supplemented with a minus s ign. In fact such an assert ion as accurate as it may be

overall makes things too easy, in that it disregards certain deviations f rom the dominant doctrine that

also understood themselves to be Marxisms, while also regarding the above misinterpretations as completely external to Marxs own theory, thus excluding the possibility of any inconsistencies o r theoretical-

ideological ambiguities in Marxs work. To clarif y this quest ion, a glance at the dif f erentiated reading of

Marxs texts worked out in the so-called reconst ruction debates will be usef ul.

In this respect, t raditional Marxism should be understo od here as an elaboration, systematizat ion, and

assumption o f dominance of the ideological content of Marxs work within the f ramework of a reception

by Engels and his epigones. Practical inf luence was almos t exclusively allotted to these restricted and ideol

ogized interpretations o f Marxs t heory, as historical determinism or proletarian political economy.

II. Western Marxism

The f ormation o f a Western Marxism61 arises f rom the crisis o f the socialist workers movement in the

wake of the First World War (the collapse of the Second International as a result of the policy of defense

of the f atherland, the defeat of revolutions in Central and Southern Europe, the emergence of f ascist

f orces, etc.). Here it is Georg Lukcs and Karl Korschs texts published in 1923 which assume a paradig

matic character. Above all Lukcs is considered the f irst Marxist theorist who at the level of social theory

and methodo logy called into question the hitherto self -evident assumption of the complete identity of

Marxs and Engels theories. At the center o f his critique stood Engels neglect of the subject-object dialec

tic as well as his concept of a dialectic of nature, to which the f atalism of Second International Marxism

was o riented. Against this ontologization of histo rical materialism into a contemplative worldview, Lukcs,

like Western Marxism as a whole, understands Marxs approach to be a critical revolutionary theory o f

social praxis. Against the scientist ic talk of objective laws of development o f social progress, Lukcs

posits the critique of ideology of reif ied consciousness, deciphering the capitalist mode of production as a

histo rically specific f orm of social praxis oss if ied into a second nature, and emphasizing revolution as a

critical act o f practical subjectivity. Self -descriptions such as philosophy of praxis (Gramsci) or critical the

ory of society (Horkheimer) theref ore do not const itute code words o r conceptual equivalents f or o f f icial

party doct rine, but rather emphasize a learning process f rom which arises a critical, action-oriented current

of thought o f Marxist heritage.62 Although Western Marxism at f irst pos itively adopted the activist

impulses of the October Revolution, its leading representatives would quickly come to reject the doctrine of

Leninism, above all its continuation of a naturalist ic social theory and its f alse universalizat ion of the experi

ence of the Russ ian Revolution. Georg Lukcs critique of Bukharins Theory o f Historical Materialism

serves as an example of the former. In his critique, Lukcs charges that Bukharins theory, with its concepts

of the primacy of the development of the f orces o f production and the seamless application o f the meth

ods of natural science to the study of society, is f etishist ic and obliterates t he qualitative difference

between the two subject areas of natural and social sciences, thus acquiring the accent o f a f alse objectiv

ity and mistaking the core idea of Marxs method, namely the ascription o f all economic phenomena to the

social relationships of human beings to one another.63

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In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci provided the exemplary critique of the f ixation of revolutionary strategy

upon the model of the October Revolution. Initially, he had greeted the October Revolution as a revolution

against Karl Marxs Capital,64 that is to say as a refutation of the allegedly proven impossibility of socialist

revolution in industrially backwards countries. In an almost revolutionary manner, he cited the voluntaristic

socialist annunciation as a source of a collective socialist popular will against a class consciousness

mechanically derived f rom the economy and the level of its f orces of production. Later, Gramsci would con

f ront the Marxism of the Third International with his t heory of hegemony, which rejects t he war of maneu

ver of a f rontal attack upon the repressive state apparatus as being a useless revolutionary st rategy fo r

modern Western capitalist societies. According to Gramsci, within these social f ormations civil society is

composed of a labyrinthine structure o f apparatuses in which patterns o f thought and behavior are gener

ated which exhibit an inertia that cannot be shaken by grandiose political deeds. The Russian revolutionary

model is also condemned to f ailure in the West because the belief in the universal nature of experience of

the Bolsheviks with a centralist-despot ic Tsarism leads to a disregard f or t he relevance of ideological

socializat ion by means of the apparatuses of civil society, and their ef f ect: subjection in the f orm of

auto nomous agency. However, both Lukcs and Gramsci remain loyal to the exclusively proletarian concep

tion o f revolution to the extent that the former, despite his ref lections upon reified consciousness, s till

att ributes an epistemological privilege to the pro letariat guaranteed by its economic pos ition, while

Gramscis strategically mot ivated theory of civil society is f ixated upon the roo m f or maneuver of the work

ing class.

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With the attempt at a social-psychological explorat ion of the drive/structural foundations o f the reproduc

tion of an irrational society, above all in the f orm of authoritarian and antisemitic att itudes, the Frankfurt

Inst itute f or Social Research, af ter Max Horkheimers assumption of its directo rship in 1931, achieved a

level of ref lection that ot her representat ives and currents o f Western Marxism could not match,65 and

which gives up on the reassuring support o f an imagined class consciousness of the proletariat. Finally, the

empirical class consciousness o f the proletariat as the only exist ing class consciousness is subjected to

analysis, while the irrational, emot ional dimensions of social praxis ignored by other theorists, such as

the social dimensions of the libidinal, are considered. This theoretical insight into the uncompromising

nature of critical theory is at the same time an admission of the histo rical process of an increasing rift

between emancipatory theory and the perspective of revolutionary praxis. With the propagation of social

ism in one country, the Bolshevization o f the Western Communist Parties, and the establishment o f

Marxism-Leninism as the of f icial ideology o f the Third International af ter the mid-1920s, there begins the

characterist ic iso lation of the representatives of Western Marxism: this current is lef t with neither political

inf luence nor (with the possible exception of the Frankfurt Inst itute f or Social Research) the inst itutional

f oundations f or a normal scholarly praxis. The general characterist ics of this Marxist f ormation its sense

f or the Hegelian legacy and the critical-humanist potential of Marxs theory, the incorporation of contempo

rary bourgeois approaches to elucidate the great crisis of the workers movement, the orientat ion to wards

methodo logy, the sensitization to social-psychological and cultural phenomena in connection with the ques

tion concerning the reasons f or the f ailure of revolution in the West66 provides the f ramework f or a

new type of restricted exegesis of Marx. This is essentially characterized by the neglect o f problems o f poli

tics and state theory, a selective reception of Marxs t heory of value, and the predominance of a silent

ort hodoxy concerning the critique of political economy. Although the f irst to understand the character of

capitalist rule the way Marx did anonymous, objectively mediated, and having a lif e of its own the f ound

ing document o f Western Marxism, Lukacs History and Class Consciousness, avoids a reconstruction of

Marxs theory of capitalism. Instead of an analysis o f Marxs dialectic of the f orm of value up to the f orm of

capital, which in the theory of real subsumption of f ers an explanation of the connection so decisive for

Lukcs between commodif ication and the alienated structure of the labor process , one f inds merely an

analogizing combination of a value theory reduced to the quantif ying value-f orm (due to an orientat ion

to wards Simmels cultural critique of money) and a diagnosis, oriented towards Max Weber, of the f ormal-rational tendency of the objectif ication of the labor process and modern law. Until the mid-1960s it seems

that no Western Marxists extended their debate with traditional interpretations of Marx into the realm of

value theory. Some positions go even f urther than this silent ort hodoxy, and without having seriously

engaged with the critique of political economy contrast the humanist cultural critic Marx with t he econo

mist Marx or even regard a Marxism witho ut a critique of polit ical economy as being possible.67

III. The Neue Marx-Lektre

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It was f irst within the f ramework of the neue Marx-Lektre (New Reading of Marx), which emerged in the

mid-1960s, that problems o f state theory and economic theory once again played a role outs ide of

Marxism-Leninism. This new wave of reception of Marxs t heory was also more o r less situated outs ide of

Stalinism and Social Democracy. Alongside the new reading in West European countries, there were iso lated

rudiments of a new reading of Marx occurring in Eastern Europe.68 Its genesis in West Germany coincided

with phenomena such as the s tudent movement, the f irst jolts to belief in a perpetual and politically manage

able post- war prosperity, the breaking up of the anti-communist consensus in the course of the Vietnam

War, etc., yet remained, despite its radical emancipatory claims, conf ined largely to academia. Here, we dist in

guish between this new reading of Marx in a broader sense69, and one more narrowly def ined.70 Whereas

the f ormer was an international phenomenon, the latter was conf ined primarily to West Germany. If the f or

mer st ill remained predominantly trapped within Engelsian dogma with regard to the critique of polit ical econ

omy, the latter f oregrounded the revision of previous historicist or empiricist interpretations o f Marxs f orm

analysis. In terms of content , a threef old abandonment of central topoi of traditional Marxism was consum

mated in the main threads o f the debate, themselves cont radictory and in no way shared by all participants:

a move away f rom a substantialist theory of value71; abandonment of manipulative-instrumental concep

tions of t he state72; and a move away f rom labor movement-centric interpretations of the critique of politi

cal economy, or interpretat ions based on a labor- ontological revolutionary theory (or even upon revolu

tionary theory as such).

73

This new reading articulates its theoretical ef f orts in the form of a reconst ruction of Marxs theory.

With regard to the critique of economy, a crystallization o f central questions and research tasks o ccurred

within the f ramework of the 1967 colloquium 100 Jahre Kapital.74 A reinterpretat ion o f Marxs critique was

envisioned fro m the methodological perspective of social theory: the question as to the original object of

Capital(economic f orm-determination), the particularity of scientif ic presentation (the dialectic of the f orms

of value), as well as the connection between the three volumes (capital in general many capitals) are

posed anew, as distinct f rom quantitative approaches, and with a particular emphasis upon the s ignif icance

of the Grundrisse. Within the f ield of the conf lict between critical and st ructural Marxisms, transitional

moments of f light f rom existing methodo logical traditions arise, oblique to the class ical points of conf lict75:

both structuralist anti-histo ricism as well as Hegelian figures of thought (progressive-regress ive method,

return to the f oundation) play an important role in this.

Initially with a lot of ifs and buts76, and on some points remaining within the channels of traditional Marx

ism, the New Reading of Marx acquired more clearly def ined conto urs over the course of the 1970s.

Traditional readings of Marxs theory

Classical Assumption of the Marxism of the 2ndand 3rd Internationals

Marx = Engels (unif ied paradigm, coherent argumentat ion, closed worldview)

Levels of the critical-reconstruct ive reading

Level 1: e.g. Backhaus (Materialien parts 1 and 2) Engels exoteric vs.Marx esoteric

Level 2: e.g. Althusser ( Reading Capital); A. Schmidt;Backhaus (Materialien)

Marx exoteric meta-discourse vs.Marx eso teric real analysis

Level 3: e.g. Backhaus (Materialien parts 3 and 4);Heinrich (Science of Value)

Marx exoteric/esoteric meta-discourseMarx exoteric/esoteric real analysis

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Against the classical myth of the complete equalit y between the paradigms of Marx and Engels, with regard

to both histo rical materialism and the crit ique of polit ical economy, Engels commentaries were criticized as

largely inadequate to Marxs work and remaining at a purely exoteric level that perpetuated traditional para

digms. Thus, in 1974 Hans-Georg Backhaus emphasized with regard to value theory that the critique was

aimed at an interpretat ive premise which until recently was considered one of the f ew uncontested ele

ments of the Marxist literature, and which structured the reception o f Marxs value theory without being chal

lenged: the misinterpretation, touched of f by Engels, of the f irst three chapters o fCapitalas a value and

money theory of what Engels called simple commodity production.77 Backhaus assumes that proceeding

f rom this f undamental error, Marxistvalue theory necessarily inhibited the reception of Marxs value the

ory.78 If theref ore at this level an initial distinction is made between a Marxist t heory and Marxs theory, a

problematizat ion of Marxs meta-theoret ical self -understanding also occurs early on. Louis Althusser had

already af f irmed, with t he aid of a sympto matic reading directed against a subject- centric intentionalist

hermeneutic, that Marxs work represents a scientif ic revolution in the theoret ical praxis o f the analysis o f

capitalism, which at the meta-t heoretical level is superimposed upon by a discourse inadequate to this prob

lematic. Althusser def ines the tasks of a reconstruction as the removal of the inadequate meta-discourse

and the transf ormation of its dominant metaphors , which he reads as sympto ms f or the absence of an ade

quate self -ref lection of the real procedure of the analysis o f capital, into concepts.79 As distinct f rom

Althusser and his dualist conception of the relat ionship between the real object and the object of knowl

edge80, this issue is usually formulated in the reconstruction debate within the theoretical f ramework of a

Marxian critique of ideology: Marx distinguishes between esoteric and exoteric levels in the works of clas

sical political economy. If the f ormer contains insights into the social context of mediation o f the bourgeois

mode of production, the latter is content with an unmediated description and systematizat ion of the objec

tive forms of thought of the everyday consciousness o f social actors, remaining trapped in the reif ied illu

sion of the immediacy of phenomena which are in f act so cially mediated. So the exoteric argumentat ion

cannot be traced back psychologically to subjective def iciencies or even conscious attempts at deception

on the part o f theorists . It results f rom a determinate f orm of thought which is the systematic and initially

involuntary product o f the f orms of social intercourse of the capitalist mode of production. The reconstruc

tion debate would now apply the esoteric/exoteric dist inction to Marxs work itself .

Ultimately, even in the critique of political economy and in historical materialism that is to say in the theo

retical praxis regarded at the previous s tage of reconst ruction as an intact esoteric layer exoteric con

tent and conceptual ambivalence between scientif ic revolut ion and classical tradition81 are manif est . The

doctrine of the inviolability of the presentation of the critique of political economy in Capitalis f inally dis

carded. In place of the legend of a linear progress ion of knowledge on Marxs part, t here appeared the

recognition of a complex coexistence and interpenetration of progress and regression in the method o f pre

sentat ion and the state o f research of Marxs critique of economy. Ultimately, the increased popularizat ion

of the presentation of the analysis of the forms of value f rom the Grundrisse to the second edition of Cap

italwas pointed out . This popularizat ion, to the extent that it increasingly concealed the f orm-genetic

method, of f ered points of reference to historicist and substantialist readings.82

IV. Learning Processes within Marxism

Since there is no t enough space within the f ramework of this text to elucidate even approximately the

aspects o f a scientif ic revolution internal learning processes, but also regressions t o t raditional eco

nomic and historical-philosophical pos itions in Marxs work I will attempt t o brief ly mention some of the

points arrived at in the above-mentioned learning processes within Marxism.

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Marxs theory does not af f irm some kind of automatic liberation; rather, it should be understood as the the

oret ical instance of a body of work, mediated by analysis and critique, contributing to t he liberation f rom

the automatism of an irrational mode of socialization. Marxs assert ion that he grasps the development of

the capitalist mode of production as a process of natural histo ry,83 of ten cited by both Marxists and anti-

Marxists as proo f either of the highest scientif ic status of Marxs work or of unscientif ic prophecy, should

be understoo d as a critical statement. Nature o r naturalness are negatively determined categories f or a

social system that, on the basis of its const itution by the private division of labor, asserts itself with regard

to social actors as a relentless machine using up abstract labor, as a destiny of value beyond all collective

and individual cont rol and yet reproducing itself by means o f their activity.

Marxs t heory is a unif ied critical judgment on previous history, to the ef f ect that men have allowed them

selves to be degraded into objects of the blind and mechanical process of its economic development.84

While Marx does succumb to a historical optimism that o f ten tips over into a philosophy of histo ry in the

declamatory sections o f his works, this is f undamentally contradicted by his scientif ic critique of philoso

phies o f histo ry and political economy.85 But it is precisely f rom these cliches that the Marxism of the Sec

ond and Third Internationals, as well as the more educated among those who disdain Marx, paste to gether

an abst ruse system of iron historical necessities, up to and including a law of the sequence of social for

mations which establishes the general historically necessary tendency of the progress o f the human

species.86

The critique of political economy, which in the form of Marxs late works does not withstand comparison

with the immanent claim of the programmatic declaration in TheGerman Ideology,87 namely of presenting

the capitalist mode of production in its to tality, can be presented as a process o f f our critiques: 1) the cri

tique of bourgeois society and its dest ructive natural fo rms o f development, against the background of

the real, objective poss ibility it generates of its own emancipatory transcendence, 2) the critique of the

f etishized and backward everyday consciousness of social actors systematically generated by these social

relations, 3) the critique of the entire theoretical field of political economy88, which uncritically systematizes

these common perceptions, and 4) the critique of utopian social criticism, which either conf ronts the sys

tem of the capitalist mode of production with a model of social liberation, or presumes to bring isolatedeconomic f orms to bear against the system as a whole by means of reforms.89 The critique is therefo re

not immanent in the sense that it would af f irm the determinations of exchange, bourgeois ideals, proletar

ian demands f or rights , or industrial production (which is subsumed to capital) against capitalism as

a whole.

The method of the critique of economy can be described as the development o r analysis o f f orms. It

aims to grasp the specif ic sociality of histo rically distinct modes of production. Whereas bourgeois

approaches conduct at best a science of the reproduction of society within specif ic economic and political

f orms, a critique of political economy must be conceived of as a science ofthese forms.90 Political econ

omy operates at the level of already const ituted economic objects , takes t hem empirically as a given, or canonly justif y their existence in a circular manner, without conceptually penetrating the systematic process of

their const itution. It succumbs to the self- mystif ication of the capitalist world of objects as a world of nat

ural f orms91, thus depriving humans of the ability to conf igure and altertheir fundamental structures.

In contrast, f orm-analysis develops t hese f orms (such as value, money, capital, but also law and the state)

f rom the contradictory conditions of the social constitut ion of labor, clarif ies them, grasps their essence

and necessity.92 Form developmentis not to be understood as the retracing of the histo rical development

of the object, but rather the conceptual deciphering of the immanent s tructural relationships of the capital

ist mode of production. It unscrambles the apparently independent, apparently objectively grounded forms

of social wealth and the political compulsion o f the capitalist mode of production as historically specificand

theref ore albeit in no way arbitrarily or in a piecemeal manner as changeable f orms o f praxis.

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Traditional as well as Western Marxism had completely ignored the revolutionary scientif ic potent ial of

Marxs approach, his theory of the monetary constitution of value. Above all, the neue Marx-Lektre criticized

the empiricist-histo ricist misinterpretation of the method of presentation that started with Engels, and the

premonetary interpretation of the theory of value in Capital, but also ambivalences in Marxs work itself

and the popularization of his method, which meant f orgo ing a systematic elaboration o f f undamental

ideas of value theory and methodology.93 Engels and Traditional Marxism interpreted dif f erent levels of

abstraction of the presentation of the laws of the capitalist mode of production in Capitalas empirically

coequal levels of a model of histo rically distinct modes of production. Thus categories such as abstract

labor, value, and the elementary f orm of value were reinterpreted in an empiricist way, and the connect ion

between commodity, money, and capital considered essential by Marx was transf ormed into a coinci

dence. Marxism thus operated on a methodological and value-theoretical terrain that Marx had criticized

with regard to classical econo mics. However, Marxs critique of political economy is distinct f rom an alterna

tive political economy in primarily two respects: in the f irst instance it is not the theory of surplus-value, but

rather the f orm theory o f labor that distinguishes Marx f rom classical political economy. Marx criticizes the

way political economy unref lectively presupposes the f orm of value, never questioning its genesis, unable

to grasp labor that t akes the fo rm of value as a historically specif ic social form (the question is not raised

as to why labour is represented by the value of its product94). Political economy therefo re operates f un

damentally within the f ield of f etishist ic forms. Moreover, Marx criticizes the premonetary character o f its

value theory, since it t reat[s] the f orm of value as a thing of no importance, as having no connection with

the inherent nature of commodities,95 meaning it does not distinguish between intrinsic and external mea

sure of value as categories existing at two diff erent levels o f theoretical abst raction, and does not grasp

the necess ity of the money-f orm for the exchange of commodities. Money is understood as a purely techni

cal instrument which f or reaso ns o f convenience takes the place of exchange on the basis o f calculations

of labor- time magnitudes. In Marxs work, on the other hand, money is developed as a necessary moment in

the process of commodity exchange. Without a generalf orm of value, values cannot represent value f or

each other, and would be reduced to the st atus o f products. One must therefore proceed f rom the equipri

mordial constitution o f abstract labor as a logicallyprior immanent measure of value, and money as the

external measure of value. In this sense, Marx speaks o f the substance of value as a result obtained in

exchange which f urthermore f irst acquires an intertemporal existence as capital. In contrast to the empiri

cism and ahistoricism of political economy, Marxs approach thus reveals itself to be a perception o f

essence in the sense of the reconst ruction of a structure and system of agency which is empirically not

immediately perceivable by means o f the elaborat ion of a non-empirical theoretical level which f irst makes

possible the explanation of empirical fo rms o f appearance, such as money. Marx follows a principle of the

development o f economic categories by distinguishing between dif f erent levels o f abstraction.96 Cate

gories such as abstract labor o r value theref ore have no immediate empirical referents. The sequence of

the categories o f commodity and money is not to be understoo d as a histo rical sequence of independently

exist ing circumstances, but rather as a conceptual analysis.

Overview of the Marxisms

Import ant T heorist s Cent ral Ref erence Texts of Marx/Engels

Core Concept :Marxs Theory as

Traditional Marxism [1878f f .]

[F. Engels], K. Kautsky, E.Bernstein, Lafargue, F.Mehring, A. Bebel, G.Plekhanov, etc.(= 1st Generation); V.I. Lenin, L. Trotsky, R.

Luxemburg, N. Bukharin, M.Adler, R. Hilferding (= 2ndGeneration)

Claim: Doctrine of the materialistconception of history as the centerof the collaborative works of Marxand EngelsEngels:Anti-Dhring,Ludwig Feuerbach, Review ofA

Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) etc.Marx: Capital Vol. 1 Chapter 32, Preface toCritique (1859), Manifesto (M/E)

Closed, coherentproletarian worldview and doct rineof the evolutionof nature and his

to ry (becomingand passing away)

Western Marx G. Lukcs, K. Korsch, E. Claim: Humanist early work as inter Critical-

http://viewpointmag.com/2013/10/21/between-marx-marxism-and-marxisms-ways-of-reading-marxs-theory/#fn96-2941http://viewpointmag.com/2013/10/21/between-marx-marxism-and-marxisms-ways-of-reading-marxs-theory/#fn95-2941http://viewpointmag.com/2013/10/21/between-marx-marxism-and-marxisms-ways-of-reading-marxs-theory/#fn94-2941http://viewpointmag.com/2013/10/21/between-marx-marxism-and-marxisms-ways-of-reading-marxs-theory/#fn93-2941

7/27/2019 Ingo Elbe - Between Marx Marxism and Marxisms Ways of Reading Marxs Theory

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ism [1923ff .] Bloch, H. Lefebvre, FrankfurtSchool, A. Gramsci, K. Kosik,Yugoslav Praxis-Group (G.Petrovic, P. Vranicki,etc.), Budapest School (A.Heller, G. Markus, etc.), L.Kof ler, J.-P. Sartre

pretative framework for thescientific later worksMarx: Theseson Feuerbach, 1844 Manuscripts,The German Ideology(M/E)

revolutionary theory of socialpraxis (subjective mediation o fthe object)

neue Marx-

Lektre [1965ff.]

[Predecessors: I.I. Rubin, E.

Paschukanis] H.G. Backhaus,H. Reichelt, D. Wolf , H.D.Kittsteiner, M. Heinrich,SOST, Pro jektKlassenanalyse/PEM, S.Breuer, State-DerivationDebate (B. Blanke, D.Lpple, MG, J. Hirsch, W.Mller/ Ch. Neus, N. Kostede, etc.)

Claim: apprehending the whole

Marx, or later works as interpretative framework for the earlyworksMarx: Grundrisse, Capital Vol.Ifirst edition, Urtext, Results o fthe Immediate Process ofProduction

Deciphering and

Critique of theForms of capitalist socializationby means oflogical-systematicmethod of presentations (form-developmentand critique)

Translated by Alexander Locascio

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