The Philosophy of Revolution
- The Philosophy of Revolution
Assistant Professor of Ethics (University College) and Philosophy, University of Toronto
notes
1. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford, 1942), 12–13.
2. Theses on Feuerbach (1845), trans. in Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy, ed. T. B. Bottomore and Maximilien Rubel (London, 1956), 69. In quoting Marx, 1 have used the translations in this convenient volume whenever possible.
3. Or at least to show this of a social theory which may be based on his arguments. To prevent misunderstanding, let me insist now that this is not an essay in Marxian scholarship, The exposition of Marx’s views is intended to be commonplace. It may, indeed, be sufficiently commonplace that true Marxian scholars will judge it to be based on popular misinterpretation, rather than on critical analysis of the texts. But it is a doctrine rather than a man which here interests me, so that it matters not if the doctrine be not the true child of the man, but a changeling.
4. Bottomore and Rubel, 27–8.
5. The Holy Family (1845), trans. in Bottomore and Rubel, 63.
6. Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, I (1867), trans. S. Moore and E. Aveling (London, 1938), xix.
7. The German Ideology (1845–6), trans. in Bottomore and Rubel, 53–4.
8. Ibid., 60.
9. Marx ignores the detailed arrangements whereby the capitalist system passes into socialist society because he does forget that man is the agent in history, that it is through the actions of human beings that the socialist revolution occurs. He becomes hypnotized by the iron laws which he supposes that he has discovered, and so, instead of presenting a practical programme for revolution, he lapses into eschatological raptures. Although such a programme could, as he insists, only enable man to “shorten and lessen the birth-pangs,” yet this is a more considerable advantage than he realizes. It is all very well for Marx to assure the proletariat of its eventual destination; what is then wanted is a map with the shortest and easiest route marked in red.
10. Thought and Action (London, 1959), 174–7.
11. Hobbes a liberal? Indeed yes—the only consistent one. Given the self-seeking individual which liberal theorists postulate, only Hobbes’ authoritarian sovereign will have the power to perform those negative governmental functions which all liberals accept.
12. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), trans. in Bottomore and Rubel, 246.
13. Bottomore and Rubel, 28.
14. Communist Manifesto (1848), trans. in Bottomore and Rubel, 200.
15. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), trans. in Bottomore and Rubel, 170.
16. Ibid., 243–4. I am not concerned to defend the details of this account. In the supposition that the Communist Revolution will mark the entry into the Promised Land, Marx the eschatological visionary emerges from Marx the scientific historian. By imposing a formalistic solution, based on the actual number of human classes, to the problem of human alienation, Marx does socialist thought a considerable disservice. He fails fully to recognize that society is dominated by the relations of production, so that the corporate and industrial structure of society itself produces classes. The emergence of the “New Class” in the Soviet Union, the “Power Elite” in the United States (to borrow labels from Milovan Djilas and C. Wright Mills) exemplify the continuation of this process in societies which have passed beyond the stage of capitalism known to Marx. In contemporary North American society, the opposition of owner and employee, although still present, is partially superseded by the opposition of producer and consumer. The productive system demands the ever-increasing consumption of private goods; thus Americans (and Canadians) are conditioned to want more and more of them, and to regard activities other than those necessary to the production and consumption of these goods as superfluous, wasteful, even sinful. One of the principal theoretical problems confronting contemporary socialist thinkers is the problem which Marx believed the Communist Revolution would automatically solve: how to free man from the chains society imposes upon him, so that he may use in truly human fashion the abundance his productive forces provide.
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