File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-12-15.190, message 42


Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 04:18:36 -0500
From: bookmarks <106163.77-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: Re:M-I: Romanticism in Marxism


Rob Schaap wrote:

>Marx, I don't remember where, talked about what is and is not
>scientifically knowable.  The political economy of capitalism was; much
>of that within 'the superstructure' (to which both Marx and Engels
>accorded an agentic historical role) was not.  That's what I reckon Marx
>meant when he said he was 'not a Marxist'.  He was a softer determinist
>than many of his 'followers', saying that essentially *human* categories
>had something to do with history too, and that the scientifically
>knowable 'base' merely dilineated the scope of possible (and
>scientifically unknowable) human agency at any given moment. 

        I'm fairly sure (though I can't find the quote), that Marx's famous
sound-bite "All I know is that I'm not a Marxist" was provoked by some
stupidity of his erstwhile followers, which may or may not have had to do
with the determinism Rob refers to. But I think he goes too far the other
way here. I don't understand what's meant by 'scientifically knowable'
here. Predictable in advance? Well, no, but then Marx's theory of
capitalist development doesn't mean that the detailed workings of the
capitalist system day-to-day can be predicted in advance (otherwise we
could all clean up on the stock markets). If he means human agency can't be
analysed in a framework which relates individual actions to the development
of the class struggle and the laws of motion of capitalism, then I think
he's wrong, and I'll offer as Exhibit A "The 18th Brumaire of Louis
Napoleon". That is every bit as much a scientific work as "Capital"
(scientific in the sense of laying bare the underlying factors which
explain seemingly random events and behaviour).

>*Das Kapital* is Social Science where scientific method is warranted. 
>Much of the 1844 Manuscripts seems to me to be more an exercise in 'The
>Humanities', where scientific notions of evidence are eschewed and
>speculation re. 'the human condition' is freely sheeted home to
>reworkings of Hegels, Feuerbachs et al.

        Again, I'm not sure what this means. Given the subject matter of
the "1844 manuscripts", it's difficult to see what *scientific evidence* he
could have introduced into them. Even so, and given that Marx later revised
some of the things he said there, it still seems to me that the Manuscripts
are precisely concerened with outlining a *scientific* understanding of
alienation and wage-labour, rooted in a materialist explanation of the
workings of capitalism. It's not the abstract *human condition* that Marx
is concerned with, but the historically specific condition of the workers'
alienation, and how this is produced by capitalism.

        Finally, there's a chapter in Hal Draper's "Karl Marx's theory of
revolution 4: critique of other socialisms" on reactionary anticapitalisms,
which is illuminating on the relationship between romanticism and Marxism,
and of relevance both to this discussion and the one on romanticism.


Charlie Hore, Bookmarks Bookshop  


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