Politics, Religion, and Art: Hegelian Debates

15. Marx, German Idealism, and Constructivism

321 15 Marx, German Idealism, and Constructivism Tom Rockmore This chapter is on Marx and constructivism. Constructivism is a central theme in German idealism, which lends unity to this tendency, starting with Kant, and continuing through all the later German idealists, specifically including Marx. This assertion is obviously controversial. The claim that Marx is a constructivist in a manner similar to German idealism is rarely suggested and even less rarely argued. To make out this claim, it is necessary to reread Marx differently than he is usually read, that is, to see him not as opposed to, but rather as a central figure within, philosophy , including German idealism. Since the interpretation of Marx is solidly embedded in the traditional Marxist approach, the problem of rereading Marx consists first in freeing him from interpretation complicated by his political relation to Marxism, and second in understanding his relation to post-Kantian German idealism from the perspective of constructivism. Marxism and Marx Redux Philosophical constructivism is not a main theme in the discussion of Marx, who is usually interpreted through Marxism. The conventional approach consistently insists on drawing attention to a distinction between philosophy on the one hand and Marx and Marxism on the other. Before discussing the relation between Marx and constructivism, it will be necessary to show that Marx can be read from a non-Marxist angle of vision. There is no shortage of interpretations of Marx. Most of them are “Marxist,” by which I mean they generally follow a paradigm suggested by Engels, who invented what has become known as Marxism. For present purposes, we can leave to one side specific forms of Marxism associ- 322 T O M R O C K M O R E ated with the various Internationales, Soviet Marxism, Western Marxism, and so on, in concentrating on Marxism in general. Marx, who with Engels invented a theory of ideology, is a victim of an ideological reading of his position in a way that obscures its legitimate resources while unfairly reducing it to its expected political consequences . Marxism relates to Marx as false consciousness relates to the world. Ideology is no more than a false image of the true state of the case. Elsewhere I have made the case in some detail that Marx is well worth recovering. We can begin to see why this is the case when we free his position from some of the many ideological comments that have been made about it.1 I will limit myself here to some more general remarks intended to prepare the way to recovering Marx as an important “idealist” philosopher. The Marxist view of Marx derives from Engels’s uninformed, tendentious interpretation of classical German philosophy. Marxism, in Engels ’s formulation, consists of three interrelated claims, including (1) a general claim about the single overriding problem of philosophy, (2) a proposed solution to that problem, and (3) a characterization of Marx’s relation to this solution, hence to philosophy through his relation to Feuerbach. According to Engels, there is a so-called central problem of all philosophy , which he describes as “the relation of thinking and being.”2 This approach presupposes that philosophy concerns the interaction of two factors, which he designates in different ways as subject and object, or thinking and being. There are two and only two ways of analyzing this relation, which Engels calls idealism and materialism. Idealism, which he rejects, asserts the primacy of spirit over nature; and materialism, which he favors, is the converse view, which asserts the primacy of matter over spirit. Engels believes that idealism mistakenly inverts the relation between subject and object, thought and being, spirit and nature, in offering a fantastic derivation of the world, or nature, from spirit. The correct , or materialist, approach consists in understanding spirit on the basis of nature, and not conversely. Feuerbach offers a materialist critique of Hegel, hence of idealism. Marx, who criticizes Feuerbach, supposedly improves materialism, which is the correct solution to the central problem of philosophy, from an extra-philosophical stance. This or a closely related schema is followed throughout Marxism. Engels’s schema is the basis of Lukács’s claim that Marx solves the problems of classical German philosophy from a perspective situated outside of, and hence beyond, philosophy. This claim implies that Marx is neither a German idealist nor a philosopher in any recognizable form. It 323 M A R X , G E R...