Critical Notes on an Attempt at a Popular Presentation of Marxism by Bukharin

(The "Popular Study" which Gramsci criticises is Bukharin's book Historical Materialism—a System of Sociology. This work was first published in Moscow in 1921. As far as is known Gramsci used the French translation of the fourth Russian edition, published in Paris in 1927. Another work which Gramsci mentions in his general criticism of Bukharin's position is the paper on Theory and Practice from the Standpoint of Dialectic Materialism read to the International Congress of the History of Science and Technology held in London in 1931.)

I. Premise

A work such as the "Popular Study", destined essentially for a reading public which is not intellectual by profession, ought to have taken as its starting point a critical analysis of the philosophy of common sense, which is the "philosophy of the non-philosopher", that is to say, the world conception absorbed uncritically by various social and cultural circles in which the moral individuality of the average man is developed. Common sense is not a single conception, identical in time and space: it is the "folk-lore" of philosophy and like folk-lore it appears in innumerable forms: its fundamental and most characteristic trait is that of being (even in single brains) disintegrated, incoherent, inconsecutive, in keeping with the social and cultural position of the multitudes whose philosophy it is. When in history a homogeneous social group develops, there also develops, against common sense, a homogeneous, that is, a coherent and systematic philosophy.

The "Popular Study" is mistaken at the outset (implicitly) by presupposing that the great systems of the traditional philosophies and the religion of the high clergy, that is, the world conceptions of the intellectuals and of high culture, are opposed to this development of an original philosophy of the popular masses. In reality these systems are unknown to the multitude and they have no direct effect on their modes of thought and action. This certainly does not mean that they are without any historical effect: but this effect is of another kind. These systems influence the popular masses as an external political force, as an element of force binding together the leading classes, as elements, therefore, of subordination to an external hegemony which limits the original thought of the popular masses negatively, without influencing it positively, like a vital ferment of inmost transformation of what the masses think embryonically and chaotically about the world and about life. The principle elements of common sense are furnished by religion, and so the relationship between religion and common sense is much more intimate than that between common sense and the philosophical systems of the intellectuals. But even as regards religion a critical distinction needs to be made. Every religion, even the Catholic one (or rather, especially the Catholic one, precisely because of its efforts to remain "superficially" unitary in order not to break up into national churches and social stratifications), is in reality a multiplicity of distinct and often contradictory religions: there is the Catholicism of the peasants, the Catholicism of the petty bourgeoisie and of the town workers, the Catholicism of the women and the Catholicism of the intellectuals, and this also is varied and disconnected. But not only do the cruder and less elaborate forms of these various existing Catholics have an influence in common sense: previous religions, the earlier forms of present-day Catholicism, popular heretical movements, scientific superstitions bound up with past religions, etc., these have influenced and are components of present-day common sense. In common sense the "realistic", materialistic elements predominate, that is, the direct products of raw sensation; but this does not contradict the religious element; on the contrary; these elements are "superstitious", a-critical. That is why the "Popular Study" represents a danger: it often confirms these a-critical elements, as a result of which common sense still remains ptolemaic, anthropomorphic, anthropocentric, instead of criticising such elements scientifically.

What has been said above about the "Popular Study" which criticises philosophical systems instead of taking as its starting point the criticism of common sense must be understood as a methodological note, and with certain reservations. It certainly does not mean that a criticism of the philosophical systems of the intellectuals should be disregarded. When, individually, a section of the masses critically overcomes common sense, it accepts, by this very fact, a new philosophy: so we see the necessity, in an exposition of Marxism, of polemic against traditional philosophies. Indeed, because of its tendentious character as a mass philosophy, Marxism can only be conceived in a polemical form, in perpetual struggle. Nevertheless, the starting point must still be common sense which is spontaneously the philosophy of the multitudes one is aiming to render ideologically homogeneous.

2. General Questions

Historical Materialism and Sociology

One of the preliminary observations is this: that the title does not correspond to the contents of the book. "The theory of Marxism" should mean a logical and coherent systematisation of the philosophical ideas to be met with in various places under the name of Historical Materialism (and which are often spurious, derived from outside and as such ought to be criticised and put an end to). In the first chapters the following questions should be dealt with: What is philosophy? In what sense can a conception of the world be called a philosophy? How does Marxism alter this concept? What is meant by "speculative" philosophy? Could Marxism ever have a speculative form? What are the relationships between ideologies, conceptions of the world, philosophies? How have these relationships been conceived by the traditional philosophies, etc.? The answer to these and other questions constitutes the "theory" of Marxism.

In the "Popular Study" there is also no justification of the premise implied in the exposition and explicitly stated at one place casually, that the true philosophy is philosophical materialism and that Marxism is pure "sociology". What does this assertion really mean? If it were true, the theory of Marxism would be philosophical materialism. But in that case what does it mean to say that Marxism is a sociology? What would this sociology be? A science of politics and history? Or a systematic and classified collection, according to a certain order of purely empirical observations of political practice and of the external canons of historical research? We do not find the answers to these questions in the book; still, they alone would be a theory. So the connection between the main title ("Theory", etc.) and the subtitle ("Popular Study"), is not justified. The subtitle would be a more exact title if the term "sociology" had been given a more circumscribed meaning. In fact the question arises of what is "sociology". Is it not an attempt at a so-called exact (i.e. positivist) science of social facts, that is, of politics and history, i.e. a philosophy in embryo? Has not sociology sought to achieve something similar to Marxism? But we must be clear: Marxism came into existence in the form of aphorisms and practical criteria for a specific case, because its founder (Marx) devoted his intellectual powers to other problems, especially economic ones (in a systematic form), but in these practical criteria and aphorisms is implied a whole conception of the world, a philosophy. Sociology has been an attempt to create a method for historico-political science, dependent on an already elaborated philosophical system (evolutionary positivism), on which sociology has reacted, but only partially. Hence it has become a tendency on its own, it has become a philosophy of the non-philosophers, an attempt to describe and classify historical and political facts schematically, according to criteria modelled on the natural sciences. Sociology is therefore an attempt to deduce "experimentally" the laws of evolution of human society in such a way as to be able to "foresee" the future with the same certainty with which one foresees that an oak tree will develop out of an acorn. At the basis of sociology is vulgar evolutionism and it cannot grasp the transition from quantity to quality, a transition which disturbs every evolution and every law of uniformity in the vulgar evolutionist sense. In any case every sociology presupposes a philosophy, a conception of the world, of which it is a subordinate part. And the particular internal "logic" of the various sociologies, through which they acquire mechanical coherence, is not to be confused with the general theory, i.e. the philosophy. This naturally does not mean that research for "laws" of uniformity, is not useful and interesting and that a treatment of direct observations of political practice does not have its raison d'être. But we must call a spade a spade and see treatments of this kind for what they are.

All these are “theoretical” problems and not those which Bukharin poses as such. The questions he poses are of an immediate political and ideological kind—ideology in the sense of the intermediary phase between philosophy and everyday practice; they are reflections on particular, disconnected and haphazard historico-political facts. The author does raise one theoretical question at the beginning when he notes a trend of thought which denies the possibility of constructing a sociology from Marxism and maintains that Marxism can only be expressed in concrete historical works.¹ The objection, which is very important, is only resolved in words by the author. Certainly Marxism expresses itself in the concrete study of past history and in the present-day activity of creating new history. But a theory of history and politics can be constructed, since, even if the facts are always individual and changeable in the flux of historical movement, the concepts can be theorised; otherwise one could not even know what movement or the dialectic is, and one would fall into a new form of nominalism.²

The reduction of Marxism to a sociology represents the crystallisation of the deteriorating tendencies already criticised by Engels (in his letters to two students published in Sozial Akademiker), which consist of reducing a conception of the world into a mechanical formula, giving the impression of having the whole of history in one's pocket. It has been the greatest incentive for the facile journalistic improvisations of superficially "brilliant" men. The experience on which Marxism is based cannot be schematised; it is history itself in its infinite variety and multiplicity, the study of which can lead to "philology" as a method of erudition in the ascertaining of certain facts and to philosophy in the sense of a general methodology of history. This perhaps is what is meant by those writers who, as the Study very hurriedly notes in the first chapter, deny that a sociology of Marxism can be constructed, and assert that Marxism only exists in particular historical studies (the assertion, put thus nakedly and crudely, is certainly erroneous, and would be a curious form of nominalism and philosophical scepticism).

To deny that one can construct a sociology, in the sense of a science of society, i.e. a science of history and politics, which is not itself Marxism, only means that one cannot construct an empirical compilation of practical observations which will enlarge the sphere of philology as traditionally understood. If philology is the methodological expression of the importance of ascertaining and specifying particular facts in their distinct "individuality", one cannot exclude the practical usefulness of identifying certain more general "laws of tendency" corresponding in politics to statistical laws or to laws of the greatest numbers which have helped the progress of some of the natural sciences. But it has not been emphasised that the statistical law can only be employed in political science and practice in so far as the great mass of the population remains essentially passive—with respect to the questions which interest the historian and the politician—or supposedly remains passive. On the other hand, the extension of statistical laws to the science and practice of politics can have very serious consequences in so far as one assumes them in drawing up perspectives and programmes of action; if in the natural sciences a law (if it is wrong—Trans.) can only lead to extraordinary quantities and blunders which can easily be corrected by fresh research and in any case only make the individual scientist who has used it look ridiculous, in the science and practice of politics it can result in real catastrophes whose damage can never be cleared up. Indeed, in politics the assumption of a statistical law as an essential, fatally operating law is not only a scientific error, but becomes a practical error in action; in addition it encourages mental laziness and programmatic superficiality. It should be observed that political action aims precisely at raising the multitudes out of their passivity, that is, at destroying the laws of the greatest numbers; how then can this be held to be a sociological law? If you think about it, the achievement of a planned or directed economy is itself destined to shatter statistical laws in the mechanical sense (i.e. the product of a haphazard jumble of infinite, arbitrary, individual actions); and although such an economy will have to be based on statistics, it does not, however, mean the same thing: in reality human knowledge is substituted for naturalistic "spontaneity". Another element which in political practice leads to the overthrow of the old naturalistic schemes is the substitution, in a leading function, of collective organisms (parties) for individuals and individual leaders (or divine leaders, as Michels says). With the broadening of mass parties and their organic links with the intimate (economico-productive) life of the masses themselves, the process of standardisation of popular feelings becomes conscious and critical, from being mechanical and haphazard (i.e. produced by existing environmental conditions and similar pressures). The knowledge of these feelings and the final estimate made of them are no longer arrived at through intuition on the part of leaders sustained by the identification of statistical laws, that is to say, through rational and intellectual ways, too often fallacious—which the leader translates into idea-power, into wordpower—but they are arrived at through “active and conscious participation”, through “sympathy”, through first-hand experience of details through a system which could be called “live philology”, on the part of the collective organism. In this way a close bond is formed between the large mass, the party and the leading group, and the whole well-co-ordinated complex can move as a “collective-man”....

The Constituent Parts of Marxism

A systematic treatment of Marxism cannot neglect any constituent part of the doctrine of Marx. But in what sense should this be understood? It must deal with all the general philosophical parts, it must therefore develop all the general concepts of a methodology of history and politics, and, in addition, of art, economics and ethics, and it must find the place in the general framework for a theory of the natural sciences. It is very widely held that Marxism is a pure philosophy, the science of dialectics, and that the other parts are economics and politics. As a result it is said that the doctrine is made up of three constituent parts which are at the same time the culmination and superseding of the highest levels reached by the learning of the most advanced European nations around 1848: classical German philosophy, classical English political economy and French political science and activity. This conception, which is more a general examination of the historical sources than a classification arising out of the heart of the doctrine, cannot be maintained as a definitive scheme against any other organisation of the doctrine which may be more close to reality. To the question whether Marxism is not in fact specifically a theory of history, the answer is that this is true, but that politics and economics, even in the specialised phases of political science and practice, and of economic science and policy, cannot be separated from history. That is to say: after carrying out the main task in the general philosophical part—which is Marxism true and proper: the science of dialectics and cognition, to which the general concepts of history, politics and economics are tied in organic unity—it is useful, in a popular study, to present the general ideas of each section or constituent part, and also the extent to which it is a distinct and independent science. Looking into it we see that all these points are at least mentioned in the “Popular Study”, but casually, not coherently, in a chaotic and indistinct way, because it lacks any clear and precise idea of what Marxism itself is. . .

The Intellectuals

A "well-considered" register should be compiled of the scholars whose opinions are cited or combated at any length, accompanying every name with notes on their significance and scientific importance. (This should also be done for the supporters of Marxism who are certainly not cited in proportion to their originality and significance.) In reality the references to great intellectuals are very fleeting. The question arises: was it not in fact necessary to refer only to the great intellectual opponents and to ignore the secondary ones who only chew over the phrases of the others? We certainly have the impression that Bukharin only wants to attack the weakest people and on their weakest points (or the points most inadequately sustained by the weakest thinkers), in order to win easy verbal victories (since one cannot talk of real victories). He is under the illusion that there is some similarity (apart from the formal and metaphorical one) between the ideological front and the politico-military front. In the political and military struggle it may be good tactics to break through at the points of least resistance in order to be in a position to invest the stronger points with the maximum forces made available by having eliminated the weakest auxiliaries, etc. Political and military victories, within certain limits, have a permanent and universal value, and the strategic end can be attained in a decisive way with general effects for the whole. On the ideological front, however, defeat of the auxiliaries and the minor followers has an almost negligible importance: on this front it is necessary to defeat the eminent people. Otherwise you confuse a newspaper with a book, minor daily polemic with a scientific work; the minor thinkers should be abandoned to the infinite casuistry of journalistic polemic.

A new science achieves the proof of its efficacy and fertile vitality when it shows itself able to face the great champions of the opposing tendencies, when it resolves by itself the vital questions which they posed, and demonstrates incontrovertibly that such questions are false.

It is true that an historical age and a given society are represented rather by the average and therefore mediocre of the intellectuals, but the ideology which is propagated, the mass ideology, must be distinguished from the scientific works and from the great philosophical syntheses which are the real key-stones; these must be clearly overcome, either negatively by showing their baselessness, or positively by opposing to them philosophical syntheses of greater import and significance. Reading the Study one gets the impression of a man who cannot sleep because of the moonlight and who exerts himself to kill as many fireflies as he can, convinced that the light will wane or disappear.

Science and System

Is it possible to write an elementary book, a manual, a "popular study" on a subject which is still at the stage of discussion, polemic and elaboration? A popular manual cannot be imagined except as the formally dogmatic, stylistically settled, scientifically calm exposition of a certain argument; it can only be an introduction to a scientific study, and certainly not an exposition of original scientific research, designed for young people and for a public which from the point of view of scientific ability is still in the first condition of youth and which therefore has a direct need for "certainties", and for opinions which are represented as true and beyond discussion, at least formally. If a certain doctrine has not reached this "classic" phase of its development, any attempt to "manualise" it must necessarily fail and its logical systematisation will only be apparent and illusory; we should see in fact, just as we do in the Study, a mechanical justasposition of disparate elements which remain inexorably disconnected and unlinked, despite the unitary veneer given by the literary presentation. Why not, therefore, pose the question in its correct theoretical and historical terms and be content with a book in which a series of essential problems of the doctrine are expounded monographically? This would be more serious and more "scientific". But it is popularly believed that science means "system" and nothing else, and therefore provisional systems are built up which do not have the necessary inner coherence but only the mechanical exterior.

The Dialectic

In the Study there is no treatment whatever of the dialectic. The dialectic is very superficially presupposed and is not expounded, an absurdity in a manual which should contain the essential elements of the doctrine dealt with, and whose bibliographical references should be aimed at stimulating study in order to widen and deepen the argument and not at being a substitute for the manual itself. The absence of a treatment of the dialectic may have two origins: the first may arise from the fact that Marxism is supposed to be split into two parts: a theory of history, and politics seen as sociology, i.e. to be constructed according to the method of the natural sciences (experimental in the shabby positivistic sense), and a philosophy properly so called, which would accordingly be philosophical or metaphysical or mechanical (vulgar) materialism.

Even after the big discussion against mechanicalism, Bukharin does not appear to have very much altered his presentation of the philosophical problem. As appears from the memoir presented to the London Congress on the History of Science, he continues to maintain that Marxism is divided into two parts: the doctrine of history and politics, and the philosophy, which, however, he now says is dialectical materialism and no longer the old philosophical materialism. Put in this way he no longer understands the importance and significance of the dialectic, which is degraded from being a doctrine of consciousness and the inner substance of history and the science of politics, into being a subspecies of formal logic and elementary scholasticism. The role and significance of the dialectic can be conceived in all their profundity only if Marxism is seen as an integral and original philosophy which initiates a new phase of history and of the development of world thought, in so far as it supersedes (and at the same time includes into itself the vital elements of), both idealism and materialism, the traditional expressions of former societies. If Marxism is only thought of as subordinate to another philosophy, one cannot conceive of the new dialectic; it is precisely in this that the victory effects and expresses itself.

The second origin appears to be of a psychological character. It is felt that the dialectic is very arduous and difficult, in that dialectical thinking goes against vulgar common sense which is dogmatic, hungering after incontrovertible certainties and expresses itself in formal logic. To understand this attitude better one can think what would happen if the natural and physical sciences were taught in primary and secondary schools on the basis of Einstein's theory of relativity and if the traditional notions of the "laws of nature" were accompanied by the notion of statistical laws or laws of the greatest numbers. The children would understand nothing about anything and the clash between school teaching and family and popular life would be so great that the school would become an object of scorn and sceptical caricature.

This motive seems to me to act as a brake on Bukharin; he in fact capitulates before common sense and vulgar thought because he has not posed the problem to himself in correct theoretical terms and therefore in practice is unarmed and impotent. The rough uneducated environment has dominated the educator, vulgar common sense has imposed itself on science and not vice versa; if environment is the educator it must in its turn be educated, but the Study does not understand this revolutionary dialectic. At the root of all the mistakes of the Study and of its author (whose position has not changed even after the big discussion which seems to have led him to repudiate his book, as appears from his memoir presented at the London Congress) lies precisely this pretence of dividing Marxism into two parts: a "sociology", and a systematic philosophy. Cut off from the theory of history and politics, philosophy can only be metaphysics, whereas the great achievement in the history of modern thought represented by Marxism is precisely the concrete historicisation of philosophy and its identification with history.

The Concept of "Science"

Posing the problem as a search for laws, for regular, uniform, constant lines, is linked with the need, looked at in a somewhat childlike and naïve way, of peremptarily resolving the practical problem of the foreseeableability of historical events. Since, by a strange turning upside down of perspectives, it "seems" that the natural sciences provide the ability to foresee the evolution of natural processes, historical methodology has been conceived as "scientific" only if, and in so far as, it enables one abstractly to "foresee" the future of society. Hence the search for essential causes, or rather for the "first cause", the "cause of causes". But the Theses on Feuerbach have already anticipated and criticised this naïve conception. In reality one can foresee only the struggle and not its concrete episodes; these must be the result of opposing forces in continuous movement, never reducible to fixed quantities, because in them quantity is always becoming quality. Really one "foresees" to the extent to which one acts, to which one makes a voluntary effort and so contributes concretely to creating the "foreseen" result. Foresight reveals itself therefore not as a scientific act of knowledge, but as the abstract expression of the effort one makes, the practical method of creating a collective will.

How could foresight be an act of knowledge? One knows what has been and what is, not what will be, what is "non-existent", and so unknowable by definition. Foresight is therefore only a practical act which, in so far as it is not futile or a waste of time, can have no other explanation than that stated above. The problem of the foreseeability of historical events needs to be posed correctly, so that an exhaustive criticism can be made of mechanical causation, in order to deprive it of all scientific prestige and reduce it to a mere myth which was perhaps useful in the past in a backward period of development of certain subordinate social groups.

But it is the concept of "science" itself, arising from the "Popular Study", which needs to be critically destroyed: it is taken directly from the natural sciences as if these were the only science, or science par excellence, as has been decided by positivism. But in the "Popular Study" the term science has many meanings, some explicit, others understood and scarcely mentioned. The explicit meaning is the one that "science" has in physical research. At other times it seems that method is indicated. But does there exist a general method and if it exists can it mean anything other than a philosophy? At other times it could mean simply formal logic, but can this be called a method and a science? The point must be settled that every research has its own determined method and constructs its own determined science, and that the method is developed and has been elaborated together with the development and elaboration of that determined research and science with which it is one. To believe that one piece of scientific research can be advanced by applying a typical method, chosen because it has yielded good results in other research to which it was appropriate, is a strange mistake, which has little in common with science. But there are also some general criteria which can be said to constitute the critical conscience of any scientist, whatever his "specialisation", which must be spontaneously on guard in his work. Thus a man cannot be called a scientist who shows little trust in his particular criteria, who does not have a full understanding of the concepts used, who has little information and understanding of the earlier state of the problems dealt with, who is not very cautious in his assertions, who does not advance in a necessary but in an arbitrary way and without linking the steps together, who is unable to recognise the gaps existing in the accomplishments of his own work, but ignores them and contents himself with purely verbal solutions or connections instead of declaring that he is dealing with provisional statements which can be taken up and developed, etc.

One point which can be made about many polemical references in the Study is their systematic refusal to recognise the possibility of error on the part of the individual writers cited; because of this the most varied opinions and the most contradictory wishes are attributed to a social group of which the scholars are always taken as the representatives. This point is tied up with more general methodological criteria; in other words, it is not very "scientific", or more simply, "very serious", to choose one's adversaries from among the most stupid and mediocre, or again, to choose the least essential and most incidental of their opinions and presume that one has "entirely demolished" the opponent because one has demolished one of his secondary or minor opinions, or that one has demolished an ideology or a doctrine because one has shown the theoretical insufficiency of its third- or fourth-rate champions. Again: "one must be just with one's opponents", in the sense that one must make the effort to understand what they really meant and not stop maliciously at the superficial and obvious meanings of their words. This must be said if the end proposed is to raise the tone and intellectual level of one's followers and not just the immediate one of surrounding oneself with a desert by any means or in any fashion. It must be posed from this point of view: that one's follower must discuss and maintain his point of view in discussion with able and intelligent opponents and not merely with crude uneducated people who are convinced in an "authoritarian" or "emotional" way. The possibility of errors must be stated and justified, without in any way weakening one's own conception by this, because what matters is not the opinion of Titus, Caius or Sempronius but that totality of opinions which have become collective, an element and force in society: these must be confused, in their most representative theoreticians, men who are moreover worthy of respect for the elevation of their thought and for their immediate "disinterestedness", but not because one thinks that by doing this one has "demolished" the corresponding social element and force (which would be pure enlightened rationalism), but because one has contributed: (1) to maintaining one's own side and strengthening the spirit of distinctiveness and separation; (2) to creating the basis for one's own side to absorb and bring to life its own original doctrine corresponding to its own conditions of life. . .

The so-called "reality of the external world"

The whole polemic against the subjectivist conception of reality, with the "terrible" question of "the reality of the external world", is posed badly, conducted worse and is in great part futile and useless. (I am referring also to the memoir presented to the Congress of the History of Science, held in London in June-July, 1931). From the point of view of a "popular study" the whole treatment answers more to an itch for intellectual pedantry than to logical necessity. The general public does not even believe that one can even pose such a problem as to whether the external world exists objectively. It is sufficient to state the problem to hear an uncontrollable and gargantuan outburst of hilarity. The public "believes" that the external world is objectively real, but it is precisely here that the question arises: what is the origin of this "belief" and what critical value does it have objectively? In fact this belief is of religious origin even if the people who share it are indifferent to religion. Since all religions have taught that the world, nature, the universe were created by God before the creation of man and that man therefore found the world already prepared, catalogued and defined once for all, this belief has become an iron datum of "common sense" and persists with the same firmness even if the religious sentiment is exhausted and dormant. That is why basing oneself on this experience of common sense in order to demolish the subjectivist view with "laughter", has a rather "reactionary" significance of a return to religious sentiment; in fact Catholic writers and speakers resort to the same means in order to obtain the same effect of caustic ridicule.³ In the memoir presented to the London Congress, Bukharin implicitly answers this point (which is of an external character, though it has its importance) by noting that Berkeley, to whom we owe the first complete statement of the subjectivist conception, was a bishop (so it seems we must deduce the religious origins of the theory) and then by saying that only an "Adam" who found himself for the first time in the world could think that the world existed only because he thought it (here also the religious origin of the theory is insinuated, but with little or no power of conviction).

It seems to me that the problem is rather this: how can it be explained that such a conception, which is certainly not futile even for a Marxist, if expounded in public today, can only provoke laughter and grimaces? It seems a typical case of the distance which has grown up between science and life, between certain intellectual groups, even those at the "central" leadership of high culture, and the great popular masses: and how the language of philosophy has become a jargon with as much effect as that of Harlequin. But if "common sense" is exalted, the Marxist should at the same time seek an explanation of the real significance of the conception, and of why it originated and came to be propagated among the intellectuals, and also of why it arouses the laughter of common sense. Certainly the subjectivist conception belongs to modern philosophy in its most complete and advanced form, if from it, and as the overcoming of it, there arose historical materialism which poses, in the theory of the superstructure, in realistic and historical language what traditional philosophy used to express in speculative language. The demonstration of this assumption, which is here hardly mentioned, would be of the greatest cultural import, because it would put an end to a series of discussions, as futile as they are useless and would permit an organic development of Marxism up to the point where it was made into the hegemonic exponent of high culture. It is a wonder that the connection between the idealist assertion that the reality of the world is a creation of the human spirit, and the assertion of the historicity and mortality of all ideologies on the part of Marxism, since ideologies are the expressions of the structure and are modified with its modification, has never been asserted and appropriately developed.

The question is closely connected—naturally—with the question of the so-called exact or physical sciences and the position almost of a fetish, or rather of the only true philosophy or knowledge of the world, which they have come to assume in the framework of Marxism.

But what is to be understood by the subjectivist conception of reality? Could one take it to be stated in any one of the many subjectivist theories worked out by a whole series of philosophers and professors up to the solipsistic theories? The fact is that Marxism, in this case as well, must be related to Hegelianism, which represents the most complete and brilliant form of this conception, and that from the later theories only some partial aspects and instrumental values are to be taken into consideration. And it will be necessary to examine the weird forms which the conception has assumed among its followers as well as in its more or less intelligent critics. Thus what Tolstoy writes in his Childhood and Youth should be recalled: Tolstoy tells that he was so enthusiastic about the subjectivist conception of reality, that he was often dizzy because he used to turn round suddenly, convinced that he would be able to catch the moment when he would see nothing because his spirit had not had time to "create" reality (or something similar: the extract from Tolstoy is characteristic and very interesting from the literary point of view).⁴

It requires to be shown that the "subjectivist" conception, having served to criticise transcendental philosophy from one side, as well as the simple metaphysics of common sense and of philosophical materialism, can find its true nature and its historical interpretation only within the conception of the superstructure, whereas in its speculative form it is nothing but mere philosophical romance.

The point which must be made about the "Popular Study" is that it has presented the subjectivist conception as it appears from the criticism of common sense and that it has taken up the conception of the reality of the external world in its most trivial and a-critical form, without even suspecting that the charge of mysticism could be brought against it, as in fact was done.⁵ We have only to analyse this conception to see that it is not very easy to justify a point of view of external objectivity thus mechanically understood. Does it seem that there can exist an extra-historical and extra-human objectivity? Who will judge this objectivity? Who can put himself into this position of knowing things from "the point of view of the cosmos in itself" and what would such a point of view signify? It can very well be argued that we are dealing with a residue of the concept of God, precisely in its mystical conception of an unknown God. Engels' formulation that "the unity of the world consists in its materiality demonstrated . . . by a long and laborious development of philosophy and the natural sciences", contains the very germ of the correct conception, because it appeals to history and to man in order to prove objective reality. Objective always means "humanly objective", what may correspond exactly to "historically subjective", in other words objective would mean "universally subjective". Man knows objectively in so far as his knowledge is real for the whole of mankind historically unified in a unitary cultural system; but this process of historical unification takes place with the disappearance of the internal contradictions which tear human society apart, contradictions which are the condition for the formation of groups and the emergence of ideologies which are not concretely universal but are rendered immediately short-lived by the practical origin of their substance. There is, therefore, a struggle towards objectivity (towards being free from partial and fallacious ideologies) and this struggle is itself the struggle for the cultural unification of mankind. What the idealists call "spirit" is not a point of departure but of arrival, the totality of superstructures in development towards unification which is concrete, objectively universal, and not just a unitary presupposition, etc.

Experimental science has offered the basis on which this cultural unity has, up till now, attained its greatest extension: it has been the aspect of knowledge which has contributed most towards unifying the "spirit" and rendering it universal; it is the most concretely objectivised and universalised subjectivity.

The concept of "objective" in metaphysical materialism appears to mean an objectivity which exists even outside of man, but to assert that reality would exist even if man did not exist is either to state a metaphor or to fall into a form of mysticism. We know reality only in its relations with man, and just as man is an historical process of becoming, so also knowledge and reality are a becoming, and objectivity is a becoming, etc.

Engels' expression that "the materiality of the world is demonstrated by the long and laborious development of philosophy and the natural sciences" needs to be analysed and made precise. By science does he mean the theoretical or the practical-experimental activity of the scientists or the synthesis of the two activities? In this we could be said to have the typical unitary process of reality, in the experimental activity of the scientist which is the first model of the dialectical mediation between man and nature, the elementary historical cell by which man, putting himself into relation with nature through technology, knows it and controls it. Undoubtedly, the promulgation of the experimental method separates two worlds of history, two epochs, and begins the process of the dissolution of theology and metaphysics and the development of modern thought, whose crowning is Marxism. Scientific method is the first cell of the new method of production, of the new form of active union between man and nature. The scientist-experimenter is also a worker, not a pure thinker, and his thought is continually controlled by practice and vice versa, up to the point where a perfect unity of theory and practice is formed.

The neo-scholastic Casotti (Mario Casotti, Teacher and Scholar) writes: "The researches of the naturalists and the biologists presuppose an already existing life and real organism," an expression which comes near to that of Engels in Anti-Dühring.

The agreement between Catholicism and Aristotelianism on the question of the objectivity of reality.

In order to understand exactly the possible significance of the problem of the reality of the external world, it may be useful to develop the example of the notions of "East" and "West" which do not stop being "objectively real" even if on analysis they prove to be nothing but conventions, i.e. "historic-cultural constructions" (often the terms "artificial" and "conventional" indicate "historical" facts, produced by the development of civilisation and not just rationally arbitrary or individually artificial constructions). The example given by Bertrand Russell in his little book should be recalled. Russell says roughly the following: "Without the existence of man on earth, we cannot think of the existence of London and Edinburgh, but we can think of the existence of two points in space where London and Edinburgh are today, one to the North and the other to the South." It could be objected that without thinking of the existence of man one cannot think of "thinking", one cannot think in general of any fact or relationship which exists only in so far as man exists. What would North-South or East-West mean without man? These are real relationships but nevertheless they would not exist without man and without the development of civilisation. It is evident that East and West are arbitrary, conventional, i.e. historical, constructions, because outside real history any point on the earth is East and West at the same time. We can see this more clearly from the fact that these terms have been crystallised not from the point of view of man in general but from the point of view of the cultured European classes who, through their world hegemony, have made the terms evolved by themselves accepted everywhere. Japan is the Far East not only for Europe but perhaps also for an American from California and for the Japanese themselves, who through English political culture will call Egypt the Near East. Thus through the historical content which has been compounded with the geographical term, the expressions East and West have ended by meaning certain relationships between complexes of different civilisations. So Italians often speak of Morocco as an "oriental" country, in order to refer to its Moslem and Arab civilisation. However, these references are real, they correspond to real facts, they will allow one to travel over land and sea and reach a known destination, to "forsee" the future, to objectivise reality, to understand the objectivity of the external world. The rational and the real are identified.

It seems that without understanding this relationship one cannot understand Marxism, its position vis-à-vis idealism and mechanical materialism, and the importance and significance of the doctrine of the superstructure. It is not correct to say that in Marxism the Hegelian "Idea" is replaced by the "concept" of structure, as Croce asserts. The Hegelian "Idea" is resolved into the structure as much as into the superstructures and the whole method of conceiving philosophy has been "historicised"; in other words, the emergence of a new kind of philosophy, more concrete and historical than its predecessor, has begun.

Note: The standpoint of Professor Lukacs regarding Marxism needs to be examined. It seems that Lukacs asserts that one can only speak of the dialectic for the history of man but not for nature. He may be right and he may be wrong. If his assertion presupposes a dualism between nature and man he is wrong, because he falls into a view of nature proper to religion and Greco-Christian philosophy and also into idealism, which in reality does not manage to unite men and nature and relate them together other than verbally. But if human history should be conceived also as the history of nature (also through the history of science), how can the dialectic be separated from nature? Perhaps Lukacs, in reaction against the baroque theories of the "Popular Study", has fallen into the opposite error, into a form of idealism.

Judgment of Past Philosophies

The superficial criticism of subjectivism in the "Popular Study" leads into a more general question, that of the standpoint taken regarding past philosophies and philosophers. To judge the whole philosophical past as madness and folly is not only an anti-historical error, since it contains the anachronistic pretence that in the past they should have thought like today, but it is a truly genuine hangover of metaphysics, since it supposes a dogmatic thought valid at all times and in all countries, by whose standard one should judge all the past. Anti-historical method is nothing, but metaphysics. The fact that philosophical systems have been suspended does not exclude the fact that they were historically valid and carried out a necessary function: their short-livedness should be considered from the point of view of the entire historical development and of the real dialectic; that they deserved to perish is neither a moral judgment nor sound thinking emerging from an "objective" point of view, but a dialectical-historical judgment. One can compare this with Engels' presentation of the Hegelian proposition that "all that is rational is real and all that is real is rational", a proposition which will be valid for the past as well.

In the Study the past is judged as "irrational" and "monstrous" and the history of philosophy becomes the historical treatment of teratology, since he starts from a metaphysical point of view. (In fact the Communist Manifesto contains the highest praise of the dying world.) If this way of judging the past is a theoretical error and a deviation from Marxism, can it have any educational significance, will it generate activity? It does not appear so, because the question would reduce itself to presuming that one is a special person simply because one was born in the present time and not in a past century. But at every time there has been a past and a present and being "up to date" is praise only for jokes.⁶

Immanence and Marxism

In the Study it is noted that the terms "immanence" and "immanent" are certainly used in Marxism, but that "evidently" this use is only "metaphorical". Very good. But has he in any way explained what immanence and immanent mean "metaphorically"? Why have these terms continued to be used and not replaced? Purely out of a horror of creating new words? Usually when one new conception of the world succeeds another, the earlier language continues to be used but is used metaphorically. All language is a continuous process of metaphors, and the history of semantics is an aspect of the history of culture: language is at the same time a living thing and a museum of the fossils of life and civilisation. When I use the word disaster no one can accuse me of astrological beliefs, and when I say "By Jove", no one can believe that I am a worshipper of the pagan divinity; nevertheless, these expressions are a proof that modern civilisation is a development of both paganism and astrology. The term "immanence" in Marxism has its precise meaning which is hidden in the metaphor and this must be defined exactly; in reality this definition would truly have been "theory". Marxism continues the philosophy of immanence, but rids it of all its metaphysical trimmings and leads it on to the concrete basis of history. The use is metaphorical only in the sense that the former immanence is superseded, has been superseded, although it is still presupposed as a link in the process of thought from which the new link has been born. On the other hand, is the new concept of immanence completely new? It appears that in Giordano Bruno, for example, there are many examples of such a new conception; Marx and Engels knew about Bruno. They knew about him and there remain traces of Bruno's works in their notes. Conversely, Bruno was not without influence on classical German philosophy, etc. Here are many problems in the history of philosophy which could be usefully examined.

The question of the relationship between language and metaphor is not simple, far from it. Language, however, is always metaphorical. If it is perhaps not correct to say that every statement is metaphorical in respect of the thing or the material and tangible object indicated (or the abstract concept), since that would broaden too much the concept of metaphor, it can still be said that present-day language is metaphorical in respect of the meanings and ideological content which the words have had in earlier periods of civilisation. A book on semantics—that of Michel Breals, for example—provides an historically and critically reconstituted catalogue of the semantic changes of certain groups of words. Many errors both in the field of learning and of practice derive from not taking account of this fact, in other words from not having a critical and historical view of the phenomenon of language:

1. An error of an aesthetic character, which today is being to some extent corrected but which was in the past a ruling doctrine, is that of regarding as "beautiful" in themselves certain expressions as distinct from others in so far as they are crystallised metaphors; the rhetoricians and grammarians swoon at certain words, in which they discover who knows how much virtue and abstract artistic essence. The very bookish philologist's word "joy", which suffers agonies as a result of certain etymological or semantic analyses, is actually confused with artistic delight: recently we had the pathological case of Language and Poetry by Giulio Bertoni.
2. A practical error which has many followers is the utopian idea of a fixed universal language.
3. An arbitrary tendency towards absurd word innovations, which arises from the problem posed by Pareto and the pragmatists regarding "language as the cause of error".

Pareto, like the pragmatists in so far as they believe that they have created a new conception of the world, or at least that they have originated a certain science (and that they have therefore given words a new significance or at least a new shade of meaning, or that they have created new concepts), finds himself faced with the fact that traditional words, especially those in common use, but also those used by the cultured classes and even those used by specialist groups dealing with the same science, continue to keep their old meaning despite the innovation of content, and this has reactions. Pareto creates his own "dictionary", demonstrating his aim of creating his own "pure" or "mathematical" language. The pragmatists theorise abstractly about language as the cause of error (see G. Prezzolini's little book). But is it possible to rid language of its broad metaphorical meanings? It is impossible. Language is transformed together with the transformation of the whole of civilisation, through the flowering into culture of new classes, through the hegemony exercised by one national language on others, etc., and in point of fact continues to use metaphorically the words of preceding cultures and civilisations. No one today thinks that the word "dis-aster" is bound up with astrology, and those who use it in this way are considered to be wrong. In the same way an atheist can speak of "disgrace"⁷ without being thought a follower of predestination, etc. The new "metaphorical" significance broadens with the broadening of the new culture, which, on the other hand, also coins new words and borrows words from other languages and uses them with a precise significance, i.e. without the broad aura they had in the original language. So it is probable that the term "immanence" is known, understood and used by many people for the first time only in the new "metaphorical" significance given to it by Marxism.

Questions of Nomenclature and Content

One of the characteristics of intellectuals as a socially crystallised category (one which, in other words, sees itself developing uninterrupted in history and therefore as independent of the struggle of groups, and not as the expression of a dialectical process through which every ruling social group puts forward its own category of intellectuals), is precisely their reuniting, in the ideological sphere, with an earlier intellectual category by using the same nomenclature for concepts. Every new historical organism (type of society) creates a new superstructure, whose specialised representatives and standard bearers (the intellectuals) must also be seen as "new" intellectuals, arising from the new situation, and not as a continuation of the preceding intellectuality. If the "new" intellectuals see themselves as a direct continuation of the preceding "intelligentsia" they are not in fact "new", that is, they are not tied to the new social group which represents organically the new historical situation, but are rather a conservative and fossilised residue of the historically superseded social group (which may be the same thing as saying that the new historical situation has not yet reached the level of development necessary to have the capacity of creating new superstructures, but still lives inside the crumbling casing of former history). Nevertheless, we must take account of the fact that no historical situation, even that due to the most radical change, completely transforms language, at least in its external, formal aspects. But the content of language must be changed, even if it is difficult to have exact immediate knowledge of it. On the other hand, the phenomenon is historically complex and complicated because of the existence of different cultures typical of the different strata of the new social group, some of which, in the ideological field, are still buried in the culture of historical situations sometimes even earlier than those most recently superseded. A class some of whose strata still retain a ptolemaic conception of the world, can still be the representative of a very advanced historical situation; ideologically backward (at least for some parts of its conception of the world, which is still disjointed and ingenuous), these strata are still the most advanced in practice, i.e. in their economic and political role. If the task of the intellectuals is that of determining and organising moral and intellectual reform, that is, of adjusting culture to the practical function, it is evident that "crystallised" intellectuals are conservative and reactionary. For whereas the new social group at least feels that it is separate and distinct from the preceding one, they do not even feel this distinction, but think that they can tie themselves up with the past.

On the other hand, I do not say that the entire inheritance of the past should be rejected: there are some "instrumental values" which must be accepted as a whole in order to continue to be elaborated and refined. But how can we distinguish an instrumental value from a short-lived philosophical value which ought without doubt to be rejected? It often happens that, because a short-lived philosophical value of a certain past trend is accepted, an instrumental value of another trend is rejected because it contradicts the former, even if this instrumental value would have been useful in expressing the new cultural and historical content.

So we see the term "materialism" accepted together with its past content, and on the other hand the term "immanence" is rejected because in the past it had a certain cultural and historical content. The difficulty of adjusting literary expression to the conceptual content, and the confusion of questions of terminology with questions of substance and vice versa, is characteristic of philosophical dilettantism, of a lack of historical sense in collating different stages of cultural development, i.e. of an anti-dialectical, dogmatic conception, imprisoned by abstract schemes of formal logic.

The term "materialism" in the first fifty years of the nineteenth century must be understood not only in the narrow, technical philosophical sense, but in the wider significance which it was coming to assume polemically in the discussions which began with the rise and victorious development of modern culture. Any philosophical doctrine was called materialism which excluded transcendence from the domain of thought; and therefore, in reality, not only all pantheism and immanentism was given the name of materialism but it was also applied to any practical standpoint inspired by political realism, which was opposed, in other words, to the inferior trends of political romanticism like the popularised doctrines of Mazzini, which only spoke of "missions", of "ideals" and other similarly vague, nebulous ideas and sentimental abstractions. Even nowadays in Catholic polemics the term materialism is often used in this sense; materialism is the opposite of spiritualism in the narrow sense, i.e. of religious spiritualism and so in it is comprised the whole of Hegelianism and the classical German philosophy in general, in addition to French sensationalism and illuminism. So, in the terms of common sense, everything which aims at finding the end of life in this earth and not in paradise is called materialism. All economic activity which left behind the limits of mediaeval production was "materialism" because it seemed an "end in itself", economy for economy's sake, activity for activity's sake, in the same way as today for the average European America is "materialist", because the use of machines and the number of factories and businesses exceeds a certain limit which to the average European appears "right", that within which "spiritual" needs are not mortified. And so a polemical twist of feudal culture against the developing bourgeoisie is actually used today by European bourgeois culture, on the one side against a more developed capitalism than the European, and on the other against the practical activity of subordinate social groups for whom, initially and for a whole historical epoch (i.e. until they have constructed their own economy and their own social structure) activity must be prevalently economic, or at least expressed in economic and structural terms. Traces of this conception of materialism remain in language: in German geistlich also means "clerical", pertaining to the clergy, as also in the Russian dukhoviez; and that this is prevalent can be deduced from many Marxist writers for whom, correctly, religion, theism, etc., are the points of reference for recognising "consistent materialists".

One of the reasons, and perhaps the main one, for the reduction of historical materialism to traditional metaphysical materialism is to be sought in the fact that historical materialism had to be a predominantly critical and polemical phase of philosophy, so long as there was a need for an already complete and perfect system. But complete and perfect systems are always the work of individual philosophers, and in these, side by side with the actual historical part, i.e. that corresponding to the contemporary conditions of life, there is always an abstract, "a-historic" part, in the sense that it is bound up with the preceding philosophies and answers the external and pedantic needs of the architecture of the system, or is due to personal idiosyncracies; for this reason the philosophy of a period cannot be any one individual or tendentious system: it is the totality of all the individual and tendentious philosophies, plus scientific opinions, plus religion and plus common sense. Can a system of such a kind be formed artificially? Through the work of individuals and groups? Critical activity is the only possibility, especially in the sense of passing and solving critically the problems which are presented as expressions of historical development. But the first of these problems which must be stated and understood is this: that the new philosophy cannot be in complete harmony with any system of the past, whatever this is called. Identity of terms does not mean identity of concepts.

A book to be studied in relation to this argument is F. A. Lange's History of Materialism. This work will be more or less superseded by later studies of individual materialist philosophers, but its cultural importance remains unimpaired, from this point of view: a whole series of followers of historical materialism referred to it for information about their predecessors and to find out the fundamental concepts of materialism. We can say that the following is what happened, schematically: they started with the dogmatic presupposition that historical materialism is undoubtedly traditional materialism somewhat revised and amended (amended by the "dialectic", which thus came to be assumed as a chapter of formal logic and not as itself a logic, that is, a theory of knowledge): in Lange they studied what traditional materialism was and its concepts were taken as the concepts of historical materialism. So it can be said that for the greater part of the body of concepts which are put forward under the label of historical materialism, the principal teacher and founder was none other than Lange. That is why the study of this book is of great cultural and critical interest, all the more since Lange is a conscientious and acute historian who has a very precise, definite and limited conception of materialism, and therefore, to the great amazement and almost scorn of some (like Plekhanov), considered neither historical materialism nor the philosophy of Feuerbach to be materialism. Here also we can see how conventional is terminology, but it has its importance in causing errors and deviations when one forgets that it is always necessary to go back to the cultural sources in order to identify the exact value of the concepts, since different shaped heads can wear the same cap. It is noteworthy, on the other hand, that Marx never called his conception

"materialist", and how, when speaking of French materialism, he criticised it and stated that the criticism ought to have been more exhaustive. Thus he never uses the formula of "materialist dialectic" but spoke of "rational" as opposed to "mystic", which gives the term "rational" a very precise significance.

The Concept of "Orthodoxy"

From some points developed earlier it appears that the concept of "orthodoxy" must be renewed and brought back to its authentic origins. Orthodoxy must not be looked for in this or that follower of Marxism, in this or that tendency linked by extraneous currents to the original doctrine, but in the fundamental concept that Marxism, "sufficient to itself", contains in itself all the fundamental elements not only for constructing a whole and integral conception of the world, a total philosophy and a theory of the natural sciences, but also for bringing to life an integral practical organisation of society; in other words, for becoming a total, integral civilisation.

Renewed in this way, the concept of orthodoxy helps to make more precise the adjective "revolutionary", which is usually applied with such facility to different conceptions of the world, theories, philosophies. Christianity was revolutionary as against paganism because it was an element of complete break between the supporters of the old and the new worlds. A theory is in fact "revolutionary" to the extent to which it is an element of separation and conscious distinction into two camps, in so far as it is an inaccessible peak for the opposing camp. To hold that Marxism is not a completely autonomous and independent structure of thought, antagonistic to all traditional philosophies and religions, means in reality not to have cut one's bonds with the old world, if not actually to have capitulated to it. Marxism has no need of heterogeneous supports; it is itself sufficiently robust and so productive of new truths that the old world resorts to it to furnish its arsenal with the most modern and effective arms. This signifies that Marxism is beginning to exercise its own hegemony over traditional culture, but the latter, which is still robust and above all is more refined and finished, tries to react like conquered Greece, to stop the crude Roman conqueror from being victorious.

Notes

1. Bukharin, Historical Materialism, Eng. trans., p. xiv. ↩
2. The fact that he has not posed correctly the question of what "theory" is, has prevented his posing the question of what religion is and from giving a realistic historical judgment of past philosophies, all of which are presented as delirium and madness.↩
3. The Church (through the Jesuits and especially the neo-scholastics: University of Louvain and the Sacred Heart at Milan) has sought to absorb positivism and also to use this reasoning in order to ridicule the idealists with the public: "The idealists are those who think that this tower exists only because you think it; if you did not think it the tower would cease to exist."↩
4. cf. Tolstoy, Childhood, Boyhood and Youth (ed. Oxford Classics) p. 196: "But by none of my philosophical tendencies was I so carried away as by scepticism, which at one time led me to the verge of insanity. I imagined that besides myself nobody and nothing existed in the universe, that objects were not objects at all, but images which appeared only when I paid attention to them, and that as soon as I left off thinking of them, these images immediately disappeared. In a word, I coincided with Schelling in the conviction that not objects exist but my relation to them. There were moments when, under the influence of this idée fixe, I reached such a state of insanity that I sometimes looked rapidly round to one side, hoping to catch emptiness (néant) unawares where I was not." In addition to the example of Tolstoy, recall the witty form in which a journalist represents the "professional or traditional philosopher" (presented by Croce in the chapter on The Philosophers) who remains for years seated at his desk, staring at the ink-pot and wondering: "Is this ink-pot inside me or outside me?"↩
5. In the memoir presented to the London Congress, Bukharin noted the accusation of mysticism, attributing it to Sombart and contemptuously ignoring it: Sombart certainly took it from Croce.↩
6. The story is told of a French petty bourgeois who had the word "contemporary" printed on his visiting card: he thought he was nothing and one day discovered that he was in fact something, precisely a "contemporary".↩
7. The Italian word disgrazia means a misfortune, an accident.↩