MEN AND IDEAS

Marx’sReligious Drama By Louis J. Halle

Hzr~ w~. FtRSa" U~ET, close up and in social scientist or the empirical scholar. His W informal circumstances, anyone whomwe mission, too, began with a vision on the Roadto have learned to regard as a "great man," we are Damascus. always disappointed. This is because there is no Marx was a social philosopher who did not such thing as a "great man"in the existential give himself altogether to the conspiratorial side world. The "great man"known to the public is of revolution. He appears to have been happiest a conceptual figure abstracted from the existen- in a library. He was not, like so manyunedu- tial manwith whomone shakes hands. I sup- cated revolutionaries, without background.As a pose that Karl Marx,ar,guing with other left- manof advanced education, who took his doc- wingintellectuals in a cafd on the Galeries Saint- torate in philosophy at the University of Jena Hubert in Brussels, appeared as one shabby after studying at Bonnand Berlin, he stood in young manamong the others. His friend, Fried- the van of the great philosophical tradition of rich Engels, wouldone day be ironically amused his day, whichwas the tradition that addressed at the myth of this same Karl Marx as it was itself to the problemof alienation. blown up, after his death, by the rather silly revolutionaries of the youngergeneration. To rR~, ~ro UNDERSTANDthe philosophy of Marx What did this man have that made him, at as a self-contained bodyof thought is like trying last, such a powerfulinfluence in history? As a to understand the fourth chapter of a book of revolutionary, organising revolutionary action, which one has not read the first three. For he was no better than others of his day. He was Chapter One we have to go back at least to to go in for economicslater, basing his thought ImmanuelKant in the eighteenth century. After on the classical and rather naive labour theory of Kanthad written the first chapter in this line of value, but it was not as an economist that he philosophical development, Hegel came along would achieve the topmost heights of distinc- and wrote an additional chapter of such intrinsic tion. As a political analyst he was surely not as power that he thereby gave his name to the good as his contemporaryof lesser fame, Walter whole tradition of Germanphilosophy from that Bagehot;as a social philosopherhe was inferior point on. Those who came after him were to Alexis de Tocqueville. His development of ostensibly commentatorson the chapter he had the sociological view that men’sconcepts reflect written, calling themselves Hegelians or neo- the material circumstances of their productive Hegelians or post-Hegelians, Old Hegelians or lives--this certainly would entitle him to an Young Hegelians. Ludwig Feuerbach trans- important place in the history of humanthought. formed Hegelianism, and then Marx trans- But it is hardly commensuratewith the magni- formed Feuerbach’s transformation. Philosophy tude of his influence. had becomea matter of writing glosses, on Hegel Marxwas extraordinary, I conclude, not as a and glosses on glosses of Hegel, of lnterpretin.~ manof action or as an academicthinker, but as him and interpreting the interpretations until one of the great visionaries of history. It wasthe Hegel would have been surprised at what bore Karl Marx whosaw an immenseand enthralling the nameof "Hegelianism," even if hyphenated vision of humansociety, the Karl Marx whoon with other terms. WhenMarx studied at the the basis of that vision created a compelling Universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena, the myth of humansociety--this is the Marx who philosophy he studied was Hegelianism. In- was extraordinary amonghis contemporaries. deed, at Berlin the memoryof Professor Hegel’s He had more of St. Paul in him than of the lectures wasstill fresh. 29

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30 Men &/de~ Judaism and Christianity had been based on appeal it had--it is overcome, wholeness is the concept of two worlds, the perfect and the achieved.All being is basic, a, lly one and indivi- imperfect. God represented perfection; man, sible. It is whatHegel calls the AbsoluteIdea." madein his image, had fallen into imperfection. Wecan call it "God"(or "mind" or "spirit" or WhenJesus came to redeem mankind, he pro- "thou. ght thinkingitself"). Thereality.of man, vided the example of Godlike perfection on m this monistic conception, is not distinguish- which1 menwere to model themselves. able fromthe reality of Godexcept in its lack of Asophisticated version of this duality is repre- completion. Perfection can be realised only sented by the philosophy of Kant. The two through the experience of imperfection, whole- worlds are the phenomenalworld, which is the nessthrough the experienceof. partialness, good world knownto our faculties of perception (i.e. through the experience of evil. Therefore, God the world of appearancesthat are not necessarily has becomesplit, has lost his wholeness.He has, true representationsof reality), andthe nou- to put it in the languagerelevant to our theme, menal world, the world of "things in them- alienated himself in external objects, in external selves" (i.e., the world of realities that we objects that represent his ownself dismembered, cannot apprehend because our faculties of per- so to speak. (Manis Godbecome partial.) His- ception present us with appearances only). tory is the process by which God, having alien- Phenomenalman is.the slave of a causal system ated himself in external objects, progressively that represents predetermination. By contrast, overcomes his alienation by acquiring know- noumenalman, whomwe have to take on faith, ledge of the external objects, thereby making is free. Our noumenalselves, by contrast with them a part of his subjective self again. Since our phenomenalselves, are subject to a morality manis real only in his identification with the that .necessarily has freedom as one of its Absolute (God), this meansthat: the world premises. whichman is conscious as being external to him- In terms of this philosophic system, the self, as being an objective world, represents his individual finds himself involved in an "anti- ownalienated self (God’salienated self); by the hOrny" or contradiction: the contradiction rOCeSSof coming to knowit he makes it no between the predetermined causality to which ~onger alien, he comprehendsit, he reincor- his apparent self is subject and the moral free- porates it in himself; and this process goes on domthat his real self enjoys. After Kant, this until there is no longer a dual world of subject distinction betweenthe two selves, with its im- and object, until the entire alien worldhas been plications of inner conflict, comesto be regarded comprehended,has been overcomeand absorbed, as intolerable. The duality must be overcome, untilall being is finally one--the universal God wholeness must be achieved. whois indistinguishable from the humanself; In Hegel’s philosophy--and this explains the until all beir~g is, moreprecisely, the Logos,for Hegel identified being in its totality with the rational. 11 depend heavily on Robert C. Tucker, Philo- History, for Hegel,is the dialectical process by sophy and Myth in Karl Marx(Cambridge, 1961), which God overcomes his alienation. Replace a bookthat makesclear muchthat wouldotherwise "God" with "Man"and this is what history is remain obscure. It has been attacked on doctrinal for Marxas well. grounds by those who, while opposedto what the Soviet Union represents as Marxism,revere Marx as an empirical scientist, the Darwinof social science (e.g., T. B. Bottomore,in KarlMarx: Early ALI~A~ONis better knownto us, in the twen- Writings, London,1963). tieth century, as a psychiatric rather than a Themagic of Marx’sappeal still arouses, a century philosophical term. It represents a common later, a passionatedefence against those whosecriti- mental ailment. The alienated person loses his cismtends to diminishhis intellectual authority. In feeling of personal identity. Perhapshe identifies truth, however,one couldquote, endlessly, passages himself with the godlike image of himself, and of Marx that no one could reconcile with the so regards his existential self as alien. He statement that the cast of his mindwas "funda- becom~esa split personality--and when this mentally scientific." (Aside from the passages of splitting of the personality, this alienation, goes evident myth-making,I raise the question whether the famous statement with which he ends his to an extreme, what you have is a case of severe Theses on Feuerbach, that the point is not to neurosis. The cure that Hegeloffers for this (for interpret but to changethe world,is to be reconciled what he calls Selbstent[remdungor self-aliena- with scientific detachment.) Onthe other hand, tion) !,s knowledge."The aim of knowledge,"he muchof Capital does represent scientific method says, is to divest the objective world that stands andscientific apparatus.It is only a narrowview of opposed to us of its strangeness, and, as the our humannature that will not allowthe possibility phrase is, to find ourselves at homein it: which of scientific activities b.y a.myth-makeror of mythi- meansno more than to trace the objective world cal proclivitiesby a sc~entlst. back to the notion--to our innermost self."

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Men &Ideas 31 N’ TH~ DUAL WORLDof Hegel’s philosophy, as later be used by Marx,and still later something I in that of Plato, the spirit or the mindor the like it wouldbe used by Marxists for the trans- idea (God or the Logos) has primacy. It is the formational interpretation of Marxism. The basic reality, andexistential reality is the alien- device was to make play with a distinction ated matter that has to be re-assimilated by the between the manifest content of Hegel’s philo- dialectical. . process, of comingto knowit. This sophy, which anyone could glean for himself by attrlbutlon of prlmacy to the idea was boundto reading Hegel’s words, and the latent content, comeinto direct collision with the positivism which could only be brought out by interpreta- that was becomingpredominant in the genera- tion. According to the manifest content of tion immediately after Hegel. For positivism Hegel’s philosophy, Godis the ultimate reality regards only the existential world as real. It of which existential menand things are incom- regards the world of spirit or of ideas as plete aspects. This manifest content, however, imaginary--a worldof ill/~sions, of nominalin- contains a hidden, esoteric, and recondite revela- ventions. Ideas are merely by-products of the tion. The revelation is that, while existential real, material world. man and God (qua idea) stand in an alienated The impactof positivistic thinking on Hegelian relation to each other, the reality is not God(as philosophymight,, one su. pposes, have had. the. in manifest Hegelianism) but man, Godbeing effect of simply dlscre&ting it and pushing ~t merely a projected figment of man’s imagina- aside. The prestige of Hegelianism, however, tion. Onemight say that the latent truth in the and the appeal of its logical structure, obviated statement that God created man in his own this. Hegel was to the dominant tradition of image is that manhas created God in his own Germanphilosophy in the first half of the image. This is the positivistic mirror-imageof nineteenth century what Aristotle had been to the idealist conception. medieval philosophy, what Marx would be to By inventing religion, Feuerbachsaid, and by philosophy throughout the Communistworld. rojecting an image of an external God, man Whatever philosophic views were put forward, ~iienates himself; he externalises his noumenal howeveranti-Hegelian they might be, had to be self. "The real relation of thoug, h,t to being," put forward in the name Of Hegelianism. They Feuerbachwrote, "is as follows: Being is sub- had to be considered as developmentsor trans- ject, thought is predicate. Thought proceeds formationsof Hegelianism.Positivistic thinking, from being, not being from thought.’" Manis therefore, instead of annihilating or displacing being; God, thought. Hegelianism, transformed it, keeping the name This revolution in Hegelianismis one of the (with modification, as "neo-Hegelianism," foundations of Marxism,with its materialistic "post-Hegelianism"). The duality of spirit and emphasis. It also has implications for the mean- flesh, of noumenonand phenomenon,of idea ing of alienation: by attributing all his best and and matter, was kept; but the relationship mostessential qualities to an external God, man between them, as primary and secondary, was denatures himself, converting himself into an reversed. The material world was given primacy impoverishedand essentially alien being. It fol- over the worldof ideas. lows that emancipationfrom religion is the only Ludwig Feuerbach is the principal link escape from alienation. between Hegel and Marx. His Essence of Chris- tianity, publishedin x84~(ten years after Hegel’s ARXbegan by accepting Feuerbach’s trans- death, the year Marxcompleted his doctoral dis- M formational criticism of Hegel in its en- sertation at Jena) caused a stir in the philo- tirety. But he did not stop there. He continued sophical world of the Hegelians, and completely the developmentof that criticism from the point seduced Marx. As Engels later put it, what at which Feuerbachleft off. Feuerbachhad been Feuerbach maintained was that "nothing exists concerned only with understanding for its own outside nature and man, and the higher beings sake (like a practitioner of pure science), while our religious fantasies have created are only the Marx was concerned to understand so as to be fantasuc reflecuon of our ownessence. able to change (like a practitioner of applied This reversal of Hegelianism,as it appears to science). Marx was commenting on Feuerbach be, was presentedas being, rather, an interpreta- when he said: "The philosophers have only tion of Hegelianism (an interpretation that interpreted the world, in various ways; the point transformed it). The device by which this was is to change it." If, as Feuerbach and Marx accomplishedis of significance because it would agreed, the illusions of religion were bad, then in Marx’sestimation it was necessary to remedy ~ Engels: "Onemust himself have experiencedthe the matter. It was necessary to change the real liberating effect of this bookto get an idea of it. situation that gaverise to the illusions. "For ex- Enthusiasmwas general; we all becameat once ample," he wrote in The German Theology, Feuerbachians." "after the earthly family is seen to be the secret

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32 Men & of the holy family, one must proceed to destroy the study of economics.It is at this time that a the former both in theory and practice." In sort of pre-Marxism, an early philosophical other words, if Godthe Father is a proiection version of Marxism,develops, revolving around of the H~rr im Haus, if the Holy Family of the idea of humanself-alienation in the econo- Mary, Joseph, and Jesus is a projection of the raic life. family as a social institution amongmen, then Marx and Engels were both preceded along the way to abolish the illusion of a heavenly this line by a somewhatolder man. In x842, society is to abolish the earthly society of which Marx, then about twenty-four, was editing the it is merely a projection. Marx was a true Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne. He and Engels, radical: he tended always to go all the way twenty-three years old, were both influenced by downto the root of the matter. Moses Hess, with whomeach separately (they Man’salienation, accordingto Feuerbach,is a hardly kneweach other at the time) had philo- function of his religious illusions. Moreessen- sophicai discussions. Hess converted Engels to tially, accordingto Marx,it is a function of the philosophical Communismrather quickly, and existential situation of whichthe illusions are in time he converted Marxas well. merely a symptom.Specifically, man’salienation is a product of the state, whichgives mana dual character: as real person and as citizen. HESS’TI~I~SlS was thatproductive activity is the Only whenreal individual man[Marx wrote] essential attribute of man. (This is reflected in takes backinto himselfthe abstract citizen of the the illusion of divine creativity, a projection of state and, as individualman, in his empiricallife, real humancreativity like the projection of the in his individual labour, in his individual rela- real humanfamily in the holy family.) The life tions, becomesa species being; only whenman of the.:,,.;pecies is oneof co-operativeproduction, recognisesand organises his "[orces propres"as by means of which mentranslate their produc- social forcesand so ceasesto separatesocial power tive powers,which are subjective, into a variety from himself in the form of political power-- of useful material objects external to themselves. only8 then will humanemancipation take place. Unfortunately, however, the productive power So Marx came to be concerned with what he of the species is then seized upon by egotistical called "the unholy forms" of alienation, as well menwho convert its objectified products into as with the holy. He cameto be concerned with moneyand private property. Accordingly, Hess "material" or "political-economic" alienation. said, "Moneyis the product of mutually alien- This led him, early in x844, to take up a study ated men; it is externalised [entiiusserte] man." that would absorb him for the rest of his life, See what has happened, now, to Hegelianism. Feuerbachheld that religion represented the ex- ternalisation of man’s selfhood, and therefore a The reference to the transformation of the his alienation. NowHess holds that, moneyre- individualinto a "speciesbeing" is of interest in its presents the externalisation of mans selfhood, implicationsof collectivity. Feuerbachhad written: "The being of manis given only in communion,in and therefore his alienation. Hegel’s philosophi- the unity of manwith man, a unity resting on the cal frameworkis kept intact, but entirely new reality of the distinction betweenthe I and the categories are hungupon it, replacing the old. Thou.... Manfor himself is manin the ordinary Just as Marxaccepted Feuerbach’s transforma- sense; manin communionwith man, the unity of tional criticism of Hegel, but kept on going, so the I and Thou, is God." he nowaccepted Hess’s transformational criti- In the wholeJacobin tradition, and in Teilhardde cism of Feuerbach’stransformational criticism-- Chardin,the individual realises himself by losing but kept on going. Hess’s alienated man(alien- himselfin the collectivity. ated by the externalisation of his production in ~ The curse of Germanphilosophy is the vague the form of moneyand private property) at last andgrandiose language, such as this, in whichit is becameMarx’s proletariat. As Marx’s thinking written.,,. Another example:. "Commumsm,"Marx wrote, ~s the soluuon of the riddle of history"- developed, the tragedy of alienation wouldcome to whichhe added, "and knowsitself to be this to be representedby a social class, the proletariat, solution." How, one mayask, can "Communism" which saw its essence alienated by greedy knowanything? Again: "Private property does not exploiters. knowhow to change crude need into humanneed; The point nowreached has its expression in its idealism is fantasy, caprice and fancy." This Marx’s Introduction to the Criticism of the represents the constant tendencyof Germanphilo- Hegelian Philosophy of Right, written at the sophy to makea corporate entity of every con- ceptual abstraction, even to makean independent end of I843. Here he refers for the first time to person with an independent will of it. The com- "the proletariat," the abstract hero of the mythic monvocabulary of Germanphilosophy is a mythical vision that is about to cometo him. "The prole- vocabulary.It is an offence against whatMarx, him- tariat," he writes, "represents the completeloss self, wouldrefer to as "the real, empirical"world. of manand can only regain itself, therefore, by One of the myths Marxcreated about himself the completem resurrection of man.

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Men & Ideas 33 The stage has now been set for the great speare, and since he lived the life of alienation morality play of modern times, "The Fall and in xgth-centuryEurope. his .dramaticima. gination the Resurrection of Man." was more than unged with romanucism. His first attempts at writing were in the field of r~ ,~ N o ~ x N A,. is alwaysmore real to us poetry. Paul Lafargue, whohad been his close T than the real. Christ taught poverty and associate, wrote of himafter his death: humility, but if an ostentatious and wealthy He knewHeine and Goethe by heart and often clergyman bears the name Of Christian we do quoted them in his conversations; he was an not doubt that he is a follower of the teachings assiduous reader of poets in all Europeanlan- of Christ. Although what Marx prophesied was guages. Every year he read Aeschylus in the the self-liberation of the masses, whenan adven- Greek original. He considered him and Shake- turer like Stalin imprisons the masses in the speare as the greatest dramaticgeniuses humanity name of Marxism, then Marxists and anti- ever gave birth to. His respect for Shakespeare Marxistsalike assumethat he is fulfilling Marx’s was boundless: he madea detailed study of his prophecy. worksand kneweven the least important of his The occasion for this observation is the gen- characters. His wholefamily had a real cult for eral assumptionthat Marxhad a scientific mind the great English dramatist; his three daughters disciplined by empirical reality. In fact, how- knewmany of his worksby heart. ever, what entranced him was not empirical His daughter, Mrs. Eleanor Marx-Aveling, in reality itself but the idea of empirical reality. her agectionate reminiscences of her childhood, Like Socrates, he inhabited the Worldof ideas wrote: rather than the world of existential phenomena. ... to me, as to mysisters before me, he read He was an idealist who made an ideal of the whole of Homer, the whole Niebelungen empirical reality, and whenhe denouncedideal- Lied, Gudrun,Don Quixote, the ArabianNights, ism in others he was merely denouncing the etc. As to Shakespearehe was the Bible of our idealism that makesanything else its ideal. house, seldom out of our hands or mouths. By Rather than a scientist, Marxwas an artist. the time I was six I knewscene upon scene of He had the dramatic imagination of a Shake- Shakespeareby heart. was that his doctrine had been formedon the basis In Capital he repeatedly cites passages of Shake- of a priori empirical evidencefrom the material speare (as well as of Greekand Italian classics world. This reflects his conceptof matter as pre- in the original language), sometimes quoting ceding mind.(In the Beginningwas Flesh, and out them at length. of Flesh came the Word.) The vision of The CommunistMani/esto, however, represented the Marxeven produced a children’s version of Germanintellectual tradition of a priori concepts. the mythic drama that was his life-work. One In this respect he wasthe opposite of his contem- of the stories that he madeup to tall his children, porary, Alexis de Tocqueville, whotravelled in according to Mrs. Marx-Aveling, was of Hans Americato study a democraticsociety at first hand, Rtckle, empirically,reserving, his conce,ptual conclusions.. a Hoffmann-likemagician, whokept a toyshop, until he had madehimself directly familiar with and whowas always "hard up." His shop was the facts. Theactors in Marx’svision of history full of the most wonderfulthings--of wooden were those conceptualabstractions called social menand women,giants and dwarfs, kings and classes. He did not derive them fromdirect know- queens, workmenand masters, animals and birds ledge of material menand women.Such knowledge as numerousas Noahgot into the Ark, tables and as he had of the proletariat, for example,he got chairs, carriages, boxesof all sorts and sizes. from books. He did not himself comefrom a work- Andthough he was a magician, Hanscould never ing-class background,was not himself a working meet his obligations either to the devil or the man, was never associated with workingmen, and butcher, and was therefore--much against the did not find out aboutthe conditionsof industrial grain---constantlyobliged to sell his toys to the employmentby visiting the factories. devil. These then went through wonderful Wemust be careful, however,to distinguish the adventures--alwaysending in a return to Hans young Marx, with his Germancast of mind, from Rtckle’sshop. the Marxwho, beginning in x849, lived the re- mainderof his life in London.The English Marx Unless.weunderstand. . .Marxas primarilya whowrote Capital, by contrast with the earlier man of literary tmag~nauonwe do not under- GermanMarx of The CommunistManifesto, repre- stand him at all. His completed conception of sents the Anglo-Saxonempirical tradition. His original vision of history is still the matrixof his history belongs to the category of dramatic thought, but nowhe elaborates it on the basis of literature, and this accounts for its hold on statistical data derivedfrom existential reality. men’s minds. With Marx, the idea of empiridsmcame first, but was realised only in the second half of his ABotrr mE ~.SD of X843, Marx’s dramatic career. Then,at last, the Wordwas made Flesh. imagination began to acquire, as one of its

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34 Men &/deo.8 properties, a protagonist called "the proletariat." ditions in France, since the humanmind cannot Just as somedramatists had taken the prostitute encompass, simultaneously, great numbers of to represent the alienated victim of a ruthless persons in their individuality. Theabstraction of and hypocritical bourgeois society, so Marxtook social class was madesurrogate for them; and a the proletariat? He got his idea of the prole- class is not an empirical reality, it is an idea. tariat, however, not from visiting proletarian The proletariat, for Marx, was not an empirical communities and observing the actual in- reality but an idea that he associated with the dividuals at work and at play, but from books. idea of empirical reality. It might, one supposes, In the 184os the proletariat was unknownin his have been a less crude and simple idea if he native Germanyexcept through socialist and had done someempirical research into its basis. other writings that described the new class of Ia that case, however,it wouldhave been a less urban industrial workers in France. satisfactory protagonist in the great morality There is circumstantial evidence that Marx’s play that was nowtaking shape in his mind. concept of the proletariat was largely derived I am anticipating, however, for the role of from a report on socialism in France prepared the proletariat wasto shape itself only gradually at the order of the Prussian Government by in Marx’s mind between i843 and 1847. Lorenz yon Stein, published in Leipzig in 1842. Von Stein, an anti-revolutionary working for an-old-fashioned monarchy, was naturally hos- T Tr~ Z~D of I843, all the elements of tile to this new phenomenon, the urban A philosophical Marxismwere already in his proletariat. He regarded it as a sort of rabble mind, but they had not yet been brought to- outside the boundsof polite society and threaten- gether in one coherent plo~. Anycreative writer ing to it. Propertyle~s itself, it tended to be knows this moment when something is about against the private property of the solid and to be born within him. There are intimations respectable classes. Undisciplined, it was dis- of the subconscious mind at work, a tendency posed to be defiant of the law that respectable to detach oneself from one’s surroundings, a people upheld. By its sheer mass it was, poten- sense of suspense. It is a time for going on long, tially, a revolutionary force. One can picture solitary walks .... And, then, typically, the Marxfalling in love with VonStein’s dangerous whole thing !s. precipitated in the conscious monster as one might fall in love with the hero mind like a vision on the Road to Damascus. of a novel. Hitherto he had been think,!ng in It had happenedto St. Augustine in the garden abstract terms of "man as a producer who at Cassiciacum in August 386; it had happened suffers alienation in the consequencesof his pro- to Descartes, sitting alone by the stove on duction. This "manas a producer" was no par- NovemberlOth, 1619; it had happened to Jean- ticular manor group of men. It was what Marx Jacques Rousseau, walking along the road to himself called a "species being." What Von Vincennes in July 1749. Something like this Stein described, however, represented actual appears to have happened, now, to Karl Marx. people in the new industrial communitiesthat )’In the late spring or earl summerof 1844 he were growing up in France; and not only actual wasstruck by a revelation. people but alienated people; and not only alien- Whatwas that revelation? ated people but people whoby their increasing Wehave to think again in terms of the dis- numbers and their revolutionary disposition tinction betweenmanifest and latent Hegelian- might actually be able to overthrowthe societies ism, between the overt meaningand the hidden from which they were alienated. Marx did not meaning. To Feuerbach, the hidden meaning himself knofv them, but only of them. He had lay in the realm of human psychology: the assurance of scientific, empirical studies by Hegelianismwas a psychological theory in dis- VonStein and others that they existed in real guise, cryptically revealing that manalienates life. himself by projecting the mental image of God The empirical individuals did not appear as as an external being. The revelation that Marx such to the writers whowrote about social con- nowexperienced consisted in the discovery that the hidden meaning of Hegelianism lay in the 5MosesHess, in a typical romantic gesture, realm of economics: Hegelianism was an econo- married a prostitute--"in order to atone for the mic theory in disguise. evil whichsociety had done." The tendencyof the This was the birth of Marxlsm--atleast in its romanticswas to idealise prostitutes becausethey wereoutcasts frompolite society. original, philosophical form. ~Marxand Engels deliberately refrained from It was in fulfilment of his vision of what publishingthese Mss.Their first appearancein the Hegelianism really meant that Marx nowwrote original Germanwas in I932, in the Historisch- those papers knownas the Economicand Philo- Kritische Gesamtausgabe,IIL They have nowbeen sophic Mss. of 1844.6 The theme was still the publishedin T. B. Bottomore’sEnglish translation. tragedy of man’s alienation and the promise of

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Men & Ideas 35 his salvation. Man,in this vision, is the supreme that corrupts, transforming free, creative self- creative artist whorealises himself in the produc- activity into alienated labour. Howwell this tion of material objects, which then becomethe corresponds- to various stereotypes of xgth-cen concrete, external embodimentsof his powers. tury romanticism l There is Goethe’s Faust, All these material objects, over the ages, trans- selling his soul to the devil. Thereis the prosti- form the physical world. They gradually sub- tute whoalienates her body for money. There stitute a wholly man-madeenvironment for the is the painter in his garret whosepaintings are primeval natural environment. The latent mean- taken from him by the wealthy middle-man to ing in Hegelianism, the meaning Hegel in- be sold to the nouveau-richebourgeois. Finally, tended, is that man, rather than God, is the it is permissible to speculate on the subjective creator7 of the world. element. Marx, himself, was the frustrated and The world of man’s production, however, suffering artist, "HansR&:kle." appears alien and hostile to him. This world The cumulative spiritual enlargement of that he has himself producedis estranged from man’s being in the manifest Hegel becomes, in him and stands against him. It is estranged be- Marx’sexposition of Hegel’s latent meaning,the cause of the waythe producing activity is car- obsessive accumulation of capital. Manis a ried on, because that activity is carried on in Kantian split personality, at war with himself: such a fashion as to alienate the producer from the creative artist at war with the greedybeast himself in the very act of producing. Produc- whoexploits him. tion, instead of being the free, spontaneous The progressive movementof history marked activity of the artist giving expression to his by the alienation of productiveforce is different genius,is forced labour for another, imposed in one important respect from that set forth in labour, production carried on in servitude. The manifest Hegelianism. Whereas the movement productive activity, Marxwrites, is experienced of history in manifest Hegelianism has the "as activity for" another and of another, living effect of progressively overcomingalienation, in as the sacrifice of life, and production of the Marx’s transformation that movement pro- object as loss of the object to an alien power, gressively increases alienation. In the manifest an alien man." Hegel, as man comes to comprehendthe objec- Tr~. ROOTOF TInS r.W~., as in so manyother tive world by cognition, he becomes progres- morality plays, is money.It is the greed for gold sively less alienated. In Marx’stransfor-mation, as he produces under improper conditions he 7 It was not only at this early stage that Marx becomesmore and more alienated. However,in regardedman as the creative artist (HansR~ckle). Marx’s transformation, which is so muchmore In Capital (Moscow,i96i , Vol. I, pp. I77-8) he dramatic than the original, history still comes writes that, by "acting on the external world and changingit, [man] at the same time changes his to the same end. It comes to that end by a ownnature. He develops his slumbering powers catastrophic total revolution that changesevery- and compelsthem to act in obedienceto his sway. thing, man’s nature and the circumstances in Weare not nowdealing with those primitive in- which he produces alike. It comes to that end stinctive forms of labour that remindus of the by a revolution in which the greedy beast is mere animal. An immeasurableinterval of time captured and destroyed, the Kantian alienation separates the state of things in whicha manbrings being finally overcomeforevermore. This revolu- his labour-power to market for sale as a com- tion is the Marxian equivalent of the Second modity, from that state in whichhuman labour was Coming. Alienation increases until the last still in its first instinctive stage. Wepre-suppose scene of all, whenit is overcomeby revolution. labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human.A spider conductsoperations that resemble So Paradise is regained. those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shamemany an architect in the constructionof her cells. But A R AD x s R is not, however,regained immedi- what distinguishes the worst architect from the pately. There is a period of purgatory before best of bees is this, that the architect raises his a redeemed mankind can come into its in- structure in imagination before he erects it in heritance. This is the short transitional period of reality. At the end of every labour-process,we get what, in the Mss. o[ 1844, Marxcalled "crude a result that already existed in the imaginationof Communism"--equivalent to what he would the labourer at its commencement." later call "the dictatorship of the proletariat." This, to mymind, is Marxat the pinnacle of his One reason why Marx and Engels withheld greamess.Here he anticipates modernevolutionary theory. This is the great and authentic vision. If these manuscripts from publication may well he had not gone on to develop it in terms that have been that in them Marx described this foretold the future specifically, and if he had not " transitional period as one of infinite degrada- vulgarised it in other ways, one could hardly tion. At this penultimatestage of man’sprogress question his title to be numberedamong the truly he has to go through an unmitigated vileness great philosophers. and viciousness as the condition precedent to

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36 Men & the self-change that will usher in the Paradise to sell his creations for gold. Just as Adamand of ultimate Communism.In this period of crude Eve found themselves in an alien world as a Communism,greed will becomeuniversal; the consequence of their greed, so Marxian man institution of marriage will dissolve and all found himself the inhabitant of an alien world womenwill descend into a state of universal that he had brought into being by his greed. prostitution; private property, recaptured from In Christian theology, Paradise is finally re- the capitalists, will minister to everyone’s gained after the Second Comingand the Day of gluttony,s Judgment.In Marx’s vision, Paradise is finally Then, however, at a given moment, human regained after the Revolution. nature will change. Then the utopian anarchy of forevermorewill at last prevail. Then, says Marx, there will be r~ ^ r x r~ Av z just describedis the original, positive abolition of priuate property, of human W philosophical Marxism,as set forth in the sell-alienation.... [Communismwill become] Mss. of I844. Howdoes it differ from the the definitive resolution of the antagonismbe- mature Marxism of The Communist Manifesto tween man and nature, and between man and 0848), whichhas its first expression in Marx’s man.It is the true solutionof the conflict between The GermanIdeology (x845-46)? existenceand essence,between objectification and Marx’s original protagonist was that great self-aflq.rmation, betweenfreedom and necessity, betweenindividual and species. It is the solution abstraction, man, undivided and undifferen- of the riddle of history and knowsitself to be tiated, the "species being." The conflict of the this solution. historic drama was an inner conflict, as it had been ever since Kant. The difficulties this posed, Then there will be transcendence of religion, for a dramatist seeking a clear-cut, workmanlike the family, the state, law, morality, science, art, resolution of the conflict, wouldnaturally have etc., etc. Thenmen will producefreely, as artists movedMarx increasingly to think of the two fulfilling themselvesin artistic creation. Then antagonists within the "species being" as two they will realise their natural tendency to persons, as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This ten- arrange things "according to the laws of dency, carried to its implicit conclusion, con- beauty." Then the alienation of men’s produc- stitutes the difference betweenthe original and tion will be overcome,for greed itself will have the final Marxism. been overcome. As Marx puts it: "all objects In the final Marxism, man has disappeared. becomefor [man] the objectification of himsel[. The "species being" is gone. There is no such The objects then confirm and realise his in- thing in the empirical reality to which Marx dividuality, they are his ownobjects, i.e., man was always appealing. Man, however, is not re- himself becomesthe object." (This, in economic placed by individual men. The real actors in terms, is simply the Hegelianprocess of assimi- Marx’s dramaare two social classes: the prole- lating the objective and alien world to one’s tarian and the capitalist. Theyhave nowbecome subjective self.) Andso, finally, there will be no separate persons, rather than separate aspects of ownership, public or private. There will be no the same person. In The CommunistMani[esto property, not even "national property." Man he and Engels will express their contempt of and external nature will have becomeone. Germansocialism because it has espoused, "not Weshould have no difficulty in recognising the interests of the proletariat but the interests this mythic drama, for it is the drama of of humannature, of man in general, who be- Genesis, of the Holy Grail, of Goethe’s Faust; longs to no class, has no reality, and subsists it is the drama of Odysseus;it is the story of only in the misty realm of philosophical fan- Cinderella. It is the universal mythof mankind, tasy." The proletarian is the good man, the so muchso that one wonders whether it must creative artist. The capitalist is the bad man, not, in its essence, be true. In Genesis, God the embodimentof gr, eed. The great drama of created man in his own image--i.e., made him good and evil, of mans fall and his redemption, a divine creature. But manalso had an element of Paradise lost and Paradise regained, remains of greed that movedhim to taste of the for- essentially the same.But it is madeless abstruse, biddenfruit, thereby bringing about his fall, his it is simplified by havingdifferent actors repre- expulsion from Paradise. In Marx’s re-writing, sent its different elements. I might have a hard manwas an artist of divine creativity. But he time explaining the drama of split personality also had an element of greed which movedhim to my younger children; but I would have no s In Revelations20, the reader will find a similar difficulty at all explaining the drama of the prediction of the penultimate.Immediately prior to GoodProletarian and the WickedCapitalist. the establishment of the Kingdomof Heavenon Hegel (and the transformational criticism of Earth, Satan will be loosed from his bonds for a Hegel) had not been for the commonmind. The finalfling. final Marxismwas. It had the advantageover the

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Men &Ideas 37 Kantian concept of inner conflict within one kind that has becomedivided against itself. person that it represented the fallacy of the Whatis symbolised is the conflict betweenthe two species, which is native to the common two selves, which is the theme of Kant, Hegel, mind. and Feuerbach, which is Marx’s "manifest" This conversion of the inner conflict into an theme until that momentin x844 or I845 when outer conflict ostensibly (but only ostensibly) it finally is translated into the dramaticmyth of eliminated the theme of alienation. Manhad good and evil, of the two social classes as con- been alienated from himself; but the prole- tending persons like Godand Satan--the whole tarian’s alienation takes the form of enslave- ending in the eschatological beatitude that fol- ment, and the term "alienation" is no longer lows the ultimate triumph of the good. used. In the revolution, the proletarian will not, ostensibly, overcomealienation, he will over- Avvarcx~xmoMarx in these terms, it becomes comethe capitalist. understandable that he should appear in modern In the final version of Marxismthere is a hero history as a figure of such Titanic power. It called the Proletariat and a villain called the becomes understandable that his thought cap- Capitalist. The villain holds the hero in bondage tured the imagination of people all over the and tortures him. But--the hero is growing in earth, that it had the power to sway whole his strength all the time, and secretly his wrath nations as the rantings of a Bakunin or the is risin, g evenas he continuesto stoop underthe fabricated myths of an Auguste Comte could villain s yoke.So history app~roachesits last act’. never do. the day when the hero shall suddenly rise up, Marx was not a sinister character bent on and cast off his yoke, and burst asunder his destroying civilisation by devious devices. He chains. Thenshall the mighty fall. Then shall was no more a villain on the scene of history the cringing villain, the erstwhile persecutor and than Joan of Arc was. He was, rather, a manof exploiter, be cast down.Then shallthe Capitalist a vast literary imagination, nourished on be consumedin the Proletariat’s vengeance. Aeschylus and Shakespeare, who had a mythic vision that, in the circumstances of the indus- trial revdution as it had developed by the E UlqDERSTAlq’DMarx best as a visionary middle of the xgth century, was destined to W who was overcome by a great dramatic move men with the power of a new religion. vision, false or true, on the Roadto Damascus. At a time when factories were mushrooming We understand him best as the maker of a in Englandand on the Continent, whenmillions myth,for his vision was of an essentially mythic of people were losing their ancient independence world. and becomingwage-slaves to the owners of the To say this is not to render a judgmenton the new machines--at such a time, what could have truth or falsity of Marxism,for mythis one of greater appeal than this drama in which the the forms in which truth is expressed, and in oppressed proletarian, suddenlyin the last act, whichit is apprehendedby us limited mortals. overthrows the capitalist tyrant, bringing into WhatI regard, for example, as the mythof the being the Kingdomof Heavenon Earth? Fall of Manin Genesis surely expresses a truth The Gospel story had promised the poor and --the sametruth as takes a different form in the downtrodden of the Romanworld that they works of SigmundFreud, who was also a great should be first, and the first should be last, on myth-maker. the Day of Judgment that was expected within Mythsmay express truth, but they express it an imminentor at least, a foreseeable future. symbolicallyrather than literally. A century of This myth had solaced half mankindfor nine- history, by failing to realise any of Marx’sfunda- teen centuries. Withindustrialisation and urban- mental predictions, has shownthat, in a literal isation, however, it began to seem remote and sense, the Marxianmyth was false. But this is unreal. Jesus had spoken to shepherds in pas- to be expected of any myth. The question to toral terms, not to factory workersin the terms ask, therefore, is whether it represents some of an industrial society. Marx’smythic vision, truth, not literally but symbolically. then, filled the growingemptiness of belief, "The projection of an inner moral drama offering to city workers the hope and the upon the outer world is the essence of myth" promise of their redemption and salvation--on (Tucker). The inner moral drama that is the that day of final judgment when the trumpet essence of Marxismis the classic dramaof man’s should, at last blow the signal for revolution. alienation--the theme of so muchliterature Thenthe first shall be last; and the last shall from the Greek myths, and from Genesis, to be first." our own day. The projection upon the outer Marxismmet the city man’s need for a new world of this inner moral drama takes the form bodyof belief. It met the need for a religion of of a con~est between the two halves of a man- the industrial age.

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FILM

Streamof Self-Consciousness

B.y Francis Wyndham

HE C~NE~tA,that precocious art, has it has been too busy establishing itself to ques- T entered a phase of self-consciousness which tion or defend its right to exist. It has taken is threatening to stunt its growth. itself for granted. Nowit is beginning to doubt This is not to announce that it has passed its own identity, which it feels the need to from aprimitive stage of artless charm to one assert by repeated allusions to its brief past. It of technical sophistication and aesthetic respon- has becomea vehicle for its ownreassurance. sibility: it madethat transition very early on in its development--certainlybefore x92r, the year of Chaplin’s The Kid, Stroheim’s Foolish Wiues, THEREARE TWO kinds of self-consciousness; the Rex Ingram’s The Four Horsemen of the adolescent, betraying itself by painful shyness, Apocalypse, Fritz Lang’s Destiny and D. W. gauche aggression or sulky silence; and the Griffith’s Orphanso] the Storm. These directors decadent, in which a mode of expression already understood the mediumto be as com- (clothes, speech, manners, style) is given plex, as demandingand potentially as powerful importance disproportionate to the thing as any other; they were self-conscious to the expressed. The prototype for the first is the degreethat (as art involves self-expression) every Bohemianand the prototype for the second is artist must be conscious of himself. But the new the Dandy: variations on these self-conscious self-consciousnessis altogether different. It con- figures recur throughout social history and the tains an element of apology, of deprecation, history of art. In the cinema, highbrowself- which mergesinto defiance and leads to a fatal consciousness (mainly found in the work of self-indulgence. . Filmsnow hysterically draw French directors) is decadent in origin; low- attenuonto the fact that they are films, as if that brow self-consciousness (the Bondfilms; What- were the point and everything else (visual ever Happenedto Baby Jane?) is adolescent; beauty, intellectual content, even entertainment middle-brow self-consciousness (Tom Jones; value) merely a pretext for driving it home. Hard Day’s Night) is a mixture of both. The By a historical accident, the cinemacame into key to all three is in the popular phrase--always being at a moment when art in general was spoken with approval--"sending oneself up." entering a self-conscious phase--whenwriters Neither "art" nor "entertainment" can now were trying to transcend the limitations of be taken straight. Jean-Luc Godard, one of the language and painters to redefine the function most serious film-makers there has ever been, of paint. But, in a self-consciously "modern" goes to desperate lengths to avoid a serious air age, the cinema had the great advantage of and to deny a serious intention (with the ironic being modern;a child of the twentieth century, result that he sometimessucceeds too well). The every moveit made, whether good or bad, could James Bondfilms are shy of even the relative only be new. Without a history, it had no need seriousness of the Fleming books, doggedly to makea self-conscious rejection of the past: sending up a send-up. To appreciate From happily engaged in exploring its owntechnical Russia with Love it is necessary to take the resources, it was spared the self-conscious re- visual allusion to Call me Bwana,made by the examinationof tools (words, notes, perspectives) same company.Similarly, in The lpcress File grown rusty with use in fabricating former one is expected to recognise Len Deighton’s masterpieces. Inevitably, it reflected someof cookstrip in Harry Palmer’s kitchen. These films the experiments and discoveries in other con- are embarrassedby the fact of being thrillers, temporary spheres: expressionism in CaligaH, whichthey successfully disguise beneath gossipy surrealism in Cocteau, popular Freud in a mil- references and a mannered technique self- lion middlebrowflashbacks. But, until recently, consciously aping thrillers of the past. But the 38

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