The complex web of history is difficult to examine and shed
light upon since the development of any historical phenomena is preserved by
ideologically-loaded power relations. On the other hand, it is widely accepted
that the analysis of a group of historical developments through the events and important
figures in politics illuminates the social realm of an ideology in the period
under study. Herewith, this essay makes an investigation into the historical
development of the Marxist doctrine from the death of Karl Marx in 1883 to the
beginning of the Second World War in 1939, adapting a chronological order
through the establishment and development of the SPD in the German Empire,
continental Marxists’ response to the First World War, and the deterioration of
the classical Marxism in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Vladimir
Lenin and Joseph Stalin.
It is essential to have a basic
knowledge of Marxism and the Marxist ideology to comprehend the historical
development of Marxism in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and
the first four decades of the twentieth century. The term Marxist was first
used in the 1880s, and “although its originator cannot be clearly identified,
it was certainly used in 1882 by the anarchist Paul Brousse.”[1] Today,
the Oxford Dictionary defines Marxism as “the political and economic theories
of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, later developed by their followers to form
the basis of communism.”[2] It
is also necessary to have a basic understanding of what classical Marxism predicts
and offers for the organisation of the society under which the institutions
govern the human life. The essential basis for the Marxist ideal is the
reconstruction of the social and economic factors which, in a capitalist
society, automatically determine the political sphere and consequently cause
the mechanised and socialised production of the proletariat to be exploited by
a small minority named bourgeoisie.[3] It was Karl Marx’s zealous study that helped him develop a
theory on the workings of what he called the capitalist society.[4] Marx
tried to understand how the capitalist society emerged out of the feudal order
to be able to trace where it would likely to lead. Analysing the social and
economic dimensions in which human beings earn their lives and govern
themselves, Marx claimed that there is one main struggle behind the law and
order of capitalism; the struggle of the capitalists, who controls the means of
productions, and the proletariat, who must continue working in order to keep
the means of productions going.[5] Therefore,
Marxism, as a term, can fundamentally be considered as an analysis of the
complex and progressing relations between the two classes.
The Oxford Dictionary describes the
word ‘continental’ as “an inhabitant of mainland Europe.”[6] On
the other hand, as an adjective, the word is described as “in, from, or
characteristic of mainland Europe.”[7] For
this reason, Marxism can be considered as a continental ideology on its own
motion. The most distinctive stance of the term ‘continental’ find its place in
philosophy, where the distinction between the continental and analytical
movements has been made without any doubt for over a century. While the
‘analytic philosophy’ refers to the philosophical works of people from outside
the mainland Europe, most frequently
that of British, American, Canadian, and Australian people; the ‘continental
philosophy’ refers to the philosophical works of people from mainland Europe,
such as Italy, France, or Germany.[8] Likewise
in philosophy, history, as a one of the fundamental fields of the social sciences,
uses the terms in the way that separates the Anglo-Saxon traditions from that
of the conventions of mainland Europe.
Hence, the term ‘continental
Marxist’ can be claimed that it refers to people who are from mainland Europe,
or who continued their economic and social studies under the European
tradition, and who shared Karl Marx’s ideas on the revolutionary overthrow of
the workings of the capitalist institutions to replace them with the
proletariat institutions that would lead to the attainment of a classless
society. Hereby, this essay analyse the ideas and different attitudes of continental
Marxists, such as Friedrich Engels, Karl Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein, Rosa
Luxemburg, Jean Jaures, Palmiro Togliatti, and Vladimir Lenin, starting from
the rise of the Marxist ideology after Karl Marx’s death to the Soviet
disengagement from the classical notions of the theory in the 1930s.
II. 1883-1900: Continental Marxists and the SPD after Karl
Marx’s Death
Marx’s legacy was a turbulent issue in the years following
his death in 1883,[9]
which was protected, predominantly without a clear alteration, by the insights
of Friedrich Engels on the Marxist interpretation of the social and economic
affairs of the time. “Karl Marx argued that social systems thrive and expand
only if they can develop technologies and sustain an increase in material
welfare.”[10]
and therefore, he did not “denied the dynamic advantages of capitalism and its
global reach, and looked upon it as a necessary stage in the pursuit of the
final stage of communism.”[11]
For this reason, one can claim that Marx’s legacy must have been read as an advice
on the sustainable development of the socialist ideology within the workings of
the capitalist states. However, after Marx’s death, Friedrich Engels argued
that “human history was, in essence, the interplay between material productive
forces and the relations of production”[12] and
therefore, the history must continue
and be expected to develop into a communist system. Ever since then, “for
Marxists, in general, history has a goal. Its ultimate goal is the lifting of
the burden of inequality and exploitation from the shoulders of the vast majority
of humankind through ‘proletarian revolution’…,”[13]
which yet to come by itself and develop historically within the workings of
capitalist institutions.
In their work The
Communist Manifesto,[14] Marx
and Engels argue that industrially developed societies are to be the determinant
in the advance of the world’s destiny.[15] Seeing
that, German socialists established the German Social-Democratic Party (SPD) in
1875[16] to
win the German government and lead the German nation to an ideal socialist
state and hence influence the other countries. In the first years of its
activities, “though not yet dominated by Marxist ideas, the SPD began defining
itself against other radical political groups…”[17] Consequently,
the German government regularly persecuted the SPD between the years 1878 and
1890[18] for
its radical activities. Nevertheless, the party kept growing and, to surprise
of many, by 1890, it had thirty-five seats in the legislature and approximately
one and a half million of the votes, which made almost 20% of the total voters
in the German Empire at that time.[19] Therefore,
it is legitimate to say that the Marxist ideas were circulating amongst the
society and the common tendencies towards left were in increase after Karl
Marx’s death.
After the death of Friedrich Engels
in 1895, Karl Kautsky was seen by many as the most dominant theorist of Marxism
in the continental Europe. He argued that there is a social process within the
capitalist society that the oppressed workers of the system would develop a
socialist class consciousness by themselves,[20] which
can be interpreted as a continuation of Engels’ ideas. Kautsky expanded Marx’s
theory on prescribing the emergence of a communist society as a natural
development and consequence of the workings of the production systems of the
capitalist society, and claimed that socialism is a historical ‘necessity’
evoked “by the development of large-scale, interdependent production.”[21] Influenced
by the ideas of Kautsky, the SPD regulated its policies in concordance with its
faith in the growth of democracy. The SPD believed that if the number of the
workers was increasing and the working class was accepting the SPD as its
representative, then the Party is approaching its objectives.[22] This
understanding eventually led the Party to develop a strong belief in democracy
and shape its politics in a reformist way, rather than in a revolutionist way
as Karl Marx previously set forth.
At the very end of the nineteenth
century, there appeared a clear distinction between essential theoretical
foundations of the Party, namely the theory of Marx and Engels, and the
reformist attitude of it. It was Eduard Bernstein, one of the authors of Erfurt Program, who felt the necessity
to reform the theory of Marxist thinking[23] and
wrote articles between 1896 and 1898, published under the name of Evolutionary Socialism in 1899, to
challenge many of the fundamental claims of the Marxist theory.[24] Bernstein
criticised Marxism by arguing that the materialist theory of history, that the
historical development of the states would lead the capitalist society to a
communist system, was invalid,[25]
considering that the Marxist theory was making use of Hegelian dialectical
perspective to develop its materialist theory of history but Hegelian
metaphysics could no longer be applied to the political agenda under the then
circumstances.[26]
Constitutively, Bernstein “diagnosed the contradiction between
social-democracy’s radical theory and its reformist politics […and therefore] he initiated a fundamental ‘revision’
of Marxism,”[27]
which was called the Theory of Revisionism. On the other hand, the radical voices within the party
objected the reformist politics of the Party and rejected Bernstein’s
revisionism. It was predominantly Rosa Luxemburg, a Marxist SPD radical, who “subjected
this trust in democracy to a devastating critique.”[28] In
1898, she released her famous brochure, entitled Reform or Revolution,[29]
in which she opposed to Eduard Bernstein’s Theory of Revisionism by arguing
that the replacement of capital values with labour could only be achieved through
radical alterations in the means of production by the proletariat power.[30] For
this reason, she requested that the revisionists and reformists leave the
Party, which was not implemented, and yet, Marx’s legacy was still kept under
the leadership of Karl Kautsky in the following years.
III. 1900-1914: Continental Marxists in France, Italy, and
Germany in the Eve of the First World War
The principles of Marxist thought
were found uncertain in the beginning of the twentieth century, when continental
Marxists were to make a decision on their attitude towards the Great war. “The
prolix, confusing, and sometimes contradictory doctrines left by Marx and Engels
as legacy to their followers in the twentieth century were to be tested by the
choices made by Marxists in the face of a European war.”[31] In
1914, humanity faced the biggest crisis of history and it was unclear what the
Marxist thought would do. “It was uncertain how Marxists should behave in the
face of one of the gravest crisis in human history.”[32] It
was a time for the theoretical development of Marxist thought on the continent
because the theoretic orientation of Marxism did not have anything to advise continental
Marxist on their perspective on the Great War. “When, in the late summer of
1914, European Marxists found themselves compelled to face the real prospect of
war, they had very little unambiguous theoretic guidance.”[33] Hence,
continental Marxists had to make a stance by themselves and arrange their
politics on the Great War without contradicting the principles of the traditional
Marxist thought.
The solution that continental Marxists came up
with was a declaration of the reactionary attitudes of the Right as the
fundamental reason for the emergence of the First World War. According to this
proclaim, it was the right wing politics that caused the Great War and the shameful
destruction of humanity. In line with this public advertisement, “the forces of
the Left, the socialists, humanists, internationalists, and feminists, all
opposed war, nationalism, imperialism, and invidious class distinction.”[34] Thus,
continental Marxists, who were lack of a strict doctrine that would guide them
in their approach to the Great War, found themselves an ‘other’, the
reactionary Right, through which they were able to construct their own politics
and adapt Marxist thought to the time in which humanity encountered the greatest
depression of its history.
In 1914 and 1915, the first years of the Great War, Continental
Marxists in different countries of Europe were in conflict with each other
regarding their attitude towards the war. For instance, although “the majority
of organized Italian Socialists championed neutrality in the war that had broke
out in Europe,”[35]
it was the revolutionary French leaders of Marxism, namely Jean Jaures, Jules
Guesde, and Gustave Herve, who “rallied around their own government in defense
of the fatherland.”[36] On
the other hand, the lack of a clear guidance on how to comport itself was more influential
in Germany because “as their nation moved closer and closer to war, German
socialists had no clear guidance as to how they, as ‘orthodox’ Marxists, were
to behave.”[37]
By 1912, although the SPD controlled over one-third of the parliament and had
over a million members,[38]
managed by its policy to become “a lifeworld in schools, organisations, clubs,
social events, and publications,”[39] in
August 1914, when the prominent leaders of the Party approved the country’s
entry into the Great War, the SPD fell down.[40] Confirming
the entry into the most destructive war of the human history back then meant
breaking off the fundamental principles of Marxist thought. For that matter, the
First World War led continental Marxist to a separation from the Marxists
doctrines of the late-nineteenth century, and yet, continental Marxists were
about to start to rise after the war.
IV. 1918-1939: Disengagement from the Classical Marxism in
the Soviet Union
When the First World War ended in
1918, it was clear to everyone that the war had been the greatest destruction
that the humanity had ever been experienced in history. There were many
different opinions on who to blame or what to do next, but “for whatever
reason, by the end of the First World War many intellectuals in the West found
Marxist theory fatally attractive.”[41] One
explanation for why Western intellectuals thought Marxism as the solution to
the great despair of the world was that the fearful days of the Great War led
people to think that “humankind might effectively gain control of its destiny –
and that the future would bring a surcease from pain, want, and oppression.”[42]
For this reason, there was a return to the traditional Marxist doctrines that
had been abandoned before the Great War. Such continental Marxists as Nikolai
Bukharin, Leon Trotsky, and Palmiro Togliatti declared that the twentieth
century saw a ‘new epoch’ in the first two decades and the Marxist anticipation
of a historical development towards a socialist society was materialised.[43] However,
while continental Marxists were praising Marxist principles in the most part of
Europe, a young man named Vladimir Lenin was developing his own reading of
Marxism in the Soviet Russia.
Lenin’s theoretical insights on the
way towards a Marxist revolution were in discussion as early as the beginning
of the twentieth century. Between the years 1901 and 1907, Lenin theorised what
a Marxist party should include, how it should behave and proceed. He “defined
the vanguard party as a group of disciplined, highly trained, professional
revolutionaries. Only such a party… could coordinate diverse struggle… and
inject socialist class consciousness into a working class dominated by
bourgeois ideology.”[44] Lenin’s
ideal party was materialised to a great extent and in 1914, he “had already
established himself as one of Russia’s major Marxist theoreticians.”[45] Lenin’s
theory spread amongst the Russian Marxists during the First World War and even
influenced a great number of continental Marxists. After taking the power in
October 1917, Lenin’s “theoretical and political vision… dominated the politics
of the Bolshevik wing of Russian social-democracy,”[46]and
hence, a new era for the continental Marxism began under the influence of his
altered Marxism.
What was a traditional Marxist
approach in the beginning of the takeover of the government in the Soviet
Russia was the redeployment of the economic forces within the country. After
the revolution, the Russian Marxists immediately oriented “towards
administrative control of the economy.”[47]
The Soviet planning of the economy was the first of its kind in the history,
which employed four fundamental policies: “an abolition of private ownership of
resources and the means of production; very high investment rations; a strong
bias towards investment in capital goods industries; and a neglect of consumer
goods production.”[48]
The essential Marxist doctrines of the continent seemed very
well working in the Soviet Union until the point in which Lenin refused to share
the governmental power with the workers. In 1919, Lenin revealed that until the
workers’ consciousness changed completely the “government institutions would be
for the workers, not by them.”[49] By
doing so, Lenin showed the first clear disengagement from classical Marxism in
the Soviet Union. After Lenin’s death in 1924, the disengagement was continued
under the leadership of Joseph Stalin who won the power struggle over Nikolai
Bukharin, Lev Kamenev, Alexei Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky, Leon Trotsky and Grigory
Zinoviev.[50]
Gaining the full power, Stalin promoted the pose of what later continental
Marxists called ‘the cult of personality’ through which “the state power was
used to represent Stalin as the most intelligent, devoted, and fearless men.”[51] In
1936, Stalin declared that socialist arrangements had triumphed in the country and
it “was socialism, and anyone who
didn’t like it was therefore anti-socialist.”[52] Therefore,
Stalin’s accession to power and the consequent acting as the leader of the
country meant a full disengagement from the classical Marxist doctrines in the
Soviet Union.
In conclusion, it is clear that the
Marxist doctrine, that rose after the death of Karl Marx and was subjected to
some different interpretations through the implementations of the Russian
leaders, namely Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, was totally ignored in
practice in the Soviet Union. On the other hand, it is shown that the Social
Democratic Party of Germany struggled to find its balance in theory and
practice, which involved the ideas of Karl Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein, and Rosa
Luxemburg at the turn of the century. It is also necessary to note that the
approaches that continental Marxists applied when the Great War broke out differed
from each other, which led the Marxist doctrine to develop in divergent forms
in the different parts of the continent.
[1] Elliott
Johnson, David Walker, and Daniel Gray, eds., Historical Dictionary of Marxism (Boulder, New York, and London:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2014), 1.
[2] Oxford English Dictionary,
“Marxism,” Oxford Dictionaries
(Oxford University Press, 2016) http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/marxism
(accessed February 26, 2016).
[3] Karl
Marx, and Friedrich Engels, The Communist
Manifesto (London: Penguin Books, 2015), 4.
[5] Bertel Ollman, “What
is Marxism? A Bird’s-Eye View,” New York
University, https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/what_is_marxism.php
(accessed February 27, 2016).
[6] Oxford English Dictionary,
“Continental,” Oxford Dictionaries
(Oxford University Press, 2016) http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/continental
(accessed February 26, 2016).
[7] Ibid.
[8] William Blattner,
“Some Thoughts about ‘Continental’ and ‘Analytic’ Philosophy,” Georgetown University, http://faculty.georgetown.edu/blattnew/contanalytic.html
(accessed February 27, 2016).
[9] Kouvelakis,
Stathis, “The Crises of Marxism and the Transformation of Capitalism,” in Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism,
ed. Jacques Bidet and Stathis Kouvelakis (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 27.
[10] Karl
Gunnar Persson, An Economic History of
Europe: Knowledge, Institutions and Growth, 600 to the Present (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 195.
[11]
Ibid., 196.
[12] A.
James Gregor, The Faces of Janus: Marxism
and Fascism in the Twentieth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 2000), 22.
[13] Ibid., 23.
[15] Ibid., 10.
[16] Roger
S. Gottlieb, Marxism 1844-1990: Origins,
Betrayal, Rebirth (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), 61.
[17] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20]
Ibid., 63.
[21] Karl
Kautsky, The Class Struggle (Erfurt
Program), trans. William E. Bohn (Charleston: Nabu
Press, 2010),
165.
[23] Eduard
Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism
(New York: Schocken, 1961), 132.
[24] Michael
Harrington, Socialism: Past and Future (New York: Arcade Publishing,
2011), 251.
[25] Sheri Berman, Social
Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), 38.
[28] Ibid., 66.
[29] Rosa
Luxemburg, “Reform or Revolution,” in the
Essential Rosa Luxemburg: Reform or Revolution and the Mass Strike, ed.
Helen Scott (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2008), 41-104.
[30] Eric D.
Weitz, “‘Rosa Luxemburg Belongs to Us!’ German Communism and the Luxemburg
Legacy,” Central European History 27.1 (1994): 38.
[31] A.
James Gregor, Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism:
Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2009), 217.
[32] Gregor,
Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism,
217.
[33] Ibid., 222.
[39]
Ibid.
[40] Ibid., 68.
[43] Ibid., 32.
[50] Jerry
Hough, and Merle Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is
Governed (Cambridge: Harvard University Press; 1979), 111.
[52] Ibid., 92.
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