KARL MARX AND THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

KARL MARX AND THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

Also byjames D. White THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 1917-21: A Short History

Karl Marx and the Intellectual Origins of Dialectical Materialism James D. White Reader in Russian and Soviet History Institute0/Russian and East EuropeanStudies Universityof Glasgow

First published in Great Britain 1996 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG2! 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-333-66857-3 DOI 10.1057/9780230374218 ISBN 978-0-230-37421-8 (ebook) First published in the United States of America 1996 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avcnue. New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-16085-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data White, James D.. 1941- Karl Marx and the intellectual origins of dialectical materialism i James D. White. p. cm. Includes bibi iographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-16085-2 I. Marx, Karl. 1818--1883. 2. Philosoph)', Marxist-History. 3. Philosophy. Marxist-Soviet Union. 4. Dialectical materialism. I. Title. B3305.M74W474 1996 I 46'.32---dc20 96--9307 CIP James D. White 1996 All rights reserved. No rep roduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be madewithout written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmittcd savc with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the tenns of any licence permitring Iimited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 TOllenharn Court Road, London Wl P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution anel civil claims for damages. 10 9 8 7 6 05 04 03 02 01 5 4 3 2 I 00 99 98 97 96

For Jimmy and Kate

Contents Preface Introduction 1 1 The Romantic Heritage 28 2 Hegel 69 3 The Young Hegelians 102 4 Marx 145 5 Marx and the Russians 211 6 Engels 281 7 Plekhanov 296 8 Struve 350 Conclusion 358 Notes 368 Select Bibliography 397 Index 408 IX vii

Preface With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the victory of the West in the Cold War the reputation of Mar:x's teaching has suffered something of a deeline. It would appear that the demise of capitalism that Marx so confidently predicted was seriously mistaken. On the contrary, the development of capitalism is being fostered on the ruins of the Soviet system of central planning. This interpretation of events of course assurnes a elose identification of Marx's ideas with Soviet communism. It is an identification that is eagerly canvassed by both defcndcrs and opponents of the Soviet regime - the former in order to establish the Soviet regime's ideological legitimacy, and the latter to discredit communist doctrine along with the regime to which it allegedly gave rise. Moreover, the identification of Marxism with the Soviet regime - at least in some of its historical phases - is rather widesprcad. It cmbraccs many if not most of thc scholars who study Marx's ideas or the Soviet system. This is unsurprising, since the most common source for the writings on Marx and Engels has traditionally been the Soviet Union. Naturally the Institute of Marxism Leninism in Moscow took care in the selection of Marx's writings to ensure that any divergences berween the content of these writings and Soviet ideology were kept to aminimum. One also has to recognize that in the West a powerful stimulus to study Mar:xism was thc supposed insight it gave into the workings of the Soviet system. Itwas, after all, the existence ofthe Soviet Union and othercommunist states that gave Marxism its contemporary political significance. Givcn this motivation, thc tendency was to emphasize elements of continuity between Marx and his Russian and Soviet adherents. It also followed that with the demise of the Soviet Union the need to study Marx's ideas lost much of its rationale. But should one really associate the intcllectual system Marx elaborated too elosely with the practice of Russian revolutionaries and Soviet politicians? It might be that the insight Marx provided has a value independent of the fate of any given political and economic regime, whcther that regime calls itself IX

x Preface socialist or not. But what, in any case, was Marx's contribution to intellectual history? That question remains disputed to this day; there are many interpretations proposed by students of Marx's ideas. One cannot even say for certain in what ways the Soviet presentation of Marx is a distortion of his true intentions; to do that one would have to know for certain what Marx's intentions were. The object of the present study is to explain how Marx's ideas evolved out of the German philosophieal context in which they were rooted, and how they were adapted in Russian revolutionary circles to produce the 'dialcctical matcrialism' which formed the basis of Soviet ideology, and which exerted an influence on how Marx's ideas have been understood in the West. Despite the theoretical nature of the subject the approach throughout is historical. That is, ideas are examined as they evolved over time. Theyare treated as historical phenomena, and exactly as in the case of historical events, they are studied für preference in primary sources. Thc chronological framework extcnds from the 1790s, when Kant's ideas began to be elaborated in different ways by representatives of the Romantie school, to the 1890s, when various works appeared in Russian which embodied the interpretation of Marx's ideas whieh would be designated as 'dialectical materialism' or 'historical materialism', In this way one can examine the intellectual materials out of whieh Marx proposed to construct his system, what the system was intended to be, why it was not eompleted, and what modifications it underwent at the hands of Marx's Russian followers. Beeause this study Iocuses to a significant degree on terminology, it has seldom been possible to use existing translations of works in German as they stood. It was necessary, for one thing, to standardize the way that various terms were rendered into English, so that, for example, the term Begriffmight not appear sometimes as 'Concept', sometimes as 'Notion' and sometimes as 'Comprehension'. This is no trivial matter; much of nineteenth-century philosophy can be presented as a discourse on the nature of the Concept, and it is essential to realize that the subject of the discussion remained the same throughout. In the ease of the Universal and the Particular, whieh were component elements in the Coneept, it has often

Preface Xl been necessary not only to standardize their translation, but to res tore them to their rightful place as philosophical terms, rescuing them from being submerged in the text or omitted altogether. In order to make it clear that such everyday words as Universal, Particular, Inner, Outer, Nature, Society, etc. are used as philosophical terms, the device of capitalizing them has been adopted in this work. This applies not only to substantives, but also to adjectival and verbal forms. This might impart to the text a certain eighteenth-century appearance, but no element of personification is implied. The convention simply denotes that the term in question does not have its usual English connotations, but is used in the sense or senses it derives from its philosophical usage in German. I have as far as possible avoided using the term 'Marxist', because of its imprecise meaning. Nor have I followed the current practice of translating the Russian word narodnik by 'populist'. In modern English this latter term has come to replace the word 'demagogue', a meaning which is only barely present in the Russian original. Narodnik, on the other hand, had as one of its connotations 'nationalist', which is entirely absent in 'populist'. I have accordingly left the word in its Russian form. I should like to extend my thanks to Paul Dukes,Jack Miller, the late Alec Nove, Ian Thatcher, Stephen White and Bill Wallace who read the typescript and gave valuable comments and advice. My sincere thanks are also due to Gräinne Twomey of Macmillan for her support and assistance.