The Illusion of History illusion of history: time and the radical political imagination

5. Eternity and Constant Transformation: Marx’s Redirection of the Problem of Time

5 Eternity and Constant Transformation Marx’s Redirection of the Problem of Time What must first be acknowledged when turning to Karl Marx and his project’s relation to time and history is that he was a thinker avowedly committed to temporality, and that his corpus is built directly on the agency of history for its fruition. Compared with Rousseau, Marx unflinchingly faces, even embraces, the pernicious reality of time. And unlike Rousseau, a firm argument can be made that he is a theorist who thought seriously on the problems of history. Thus it becomes difficult to attempt to align Marx’s thought with a timelessness that creates an illusory historical picture of reality. We seem to be moving from Rousseau , the despairing sociologist of time and utopian historical fantasist of Nature, to Marx, the revolutionary firebrand unafraid of time and scientifically prophesizing the historical future of Communism. And yet their positions are not as conflicting as one may initially think. Rousseau’s past “Nature” and Marx’s future “Communism” resemble each other so much in their obscure depiction —uncertainty toward institutions of any kind and fervent conviction in the power of the individual—that one is prompted to find the obscured governing principle behind these important aspects of their philosophies. This chapter will attempt to demon107 108  Karl Marx strate the timeless basis behind Marx’s Communism, and that Communism , and its predicted passage into reality by Marx, are the illusory history based on such timelessness. However, the significant argumentative difference between this approach and the approach to Rousseau will be to show that Marx’s favoring of the future over the past means that his timeless vision does utilize to a far more sophisticated degree temporal and historical methods. This methodological incongruity will be shown to be a consequence of Marx’s increased obligation to bring about his timeless vision in the future, a concern not so pressing for Rousseau. There seems nothing more diametrically opposed than the sensitive countenance of a Rousseau and the stiff scientific deliberation of a Marx. Yet in both Marx’s and Engels’ early years we find literary experiments in poetry and prose. Marx looked back on these attempts with uncertainty and embarrassment, while at the same time admiring their youthful warmth and sincerity of feeling. The insipid and the monstrous shine simultaneously in Marx’s earliest pieces of poetical writing as apocalyptic visions and grandiose pronouncements stand side by side with sweet love poems and glib witticisms. Such an early romantic persuasion, so difficult to reconcile with the later cold and hard construction of scientific and philosophic systems, should not be dismissed as a premature and forgettable peculiarity. It has been shown that Marx moved from adolescent romantic, to Kantian Idealist, to critical Hegelian.1 This should certainly not be viewed in a linear way in which each movement leaves the past moment behind, thus doing away with the romantic and idealistic. Instead this should be seen as a burgeoning of possibilities, expanding and retaining their motivations. Marx’s poetic side should not be relegated to the label of “early,” but should be seen as “formative.” Rousseau’s romantic “man of feeling” can very easily be perceived as the pilot light of Marx’s Communistic bonfire. Indeed, some commentators have described Marx’s vision of Communism as a society of artists, freely creating and finding inspiration in all aspects of their lives.2 Such a favorable and romantic interpretation of Communism can only be sustained with reference to the romantic, utopian echoes in Marx’s thought. In Marx’s unfinished poetic tragedy, Oulanem, the hero, in the middle of 1. Warren Breckman, Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 261. 2. Eugene Kamenka noted this in his Marxism and Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1970), 18. Eternity and Constant Transformation   109 a bout of furious writing and with papers strewn around him, delivers an impassioned soliloquy. All lost! The hour is now expired, and time Stands still. This pigmy universe collapses. Soon I shall clasp Eternity and howl Humanity’s giant curse into its ear. Later he continues, To be the calendar-fools of Time; to be, Only that something thus at least might happen; And to decay, that there might be decay! The worlds must have had need of one more thing And finally, And in Eternity’s ring I’ll dance...