MARXISM AND PHILOSOPHY MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS CLASSICS Karl Korsch Translated and with an Introduction by Fred Halliday Copyright © 1970, 2008 by Monthly Review Press All rights reserved Originally published by NLB ISBN 978-0-85.'345-15.'3-2 Monthly Review Press 146 West 29th Street, Suite 6W New York, NY 10001 www.monthlyreview.org Karl Korsch: An Introduction hyFred Halliday 7 Marxism and Philosophy [1923] 29 The Present State of the Problem of 'Marxism and Philosophy' [1930] 98 Introduction to the Critique of tlte Gotlta Programme [1922] 145 The Marxism of the First International [1914] 171 Karl Korsch An Introduction Karl Korsch was born on 15 August 1886 in Todstedt, near Hamburg.1 His father was a bank official who came originally from an East Prussian family of small farmers. After some time in Todstedt, the family moved to Meiningen, in Thuringia, where Korsch attended the local secondary school. Later he attended the universities of Munich, Berlin, Geneva and Jena. He studied law, economics and philosophy and was also a member of a 'Free Student Movement' which was opposed to the reactionary and nationalist student fraternities (Verhin­ dungen) and aimed to establish contacts between the academic world and the socialist movement. In 1910 he acquired his doctorate at Jena, with a thesis on the onus of proof in admis­ sions of guilt. It was published a year later in Berlin. Between 1912 and 1914 Korsch continued his studies in London. He joined the Fabian Society, and was strongly influenced by the syndicalist movement. In his early years, he I. The best sources for the biographical information on Korsch are Erich Gerlach's introduction and biographical notes to the 1966 edition of Marxismusund Philosophie (Europliische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt); Herman Weber's Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus (Euro­ piiische Verlagsanstalt, 1969); and the special number of Alternative on Korsch (Berlin, April 1965,41). 7 8 An Introduction believed that these emphasized the positive content and actively democratic aspects of socialism, by contrast with the orthodox Marxism of the Second International which he thought defined itself merely negatively as the abolition of the capitalist mode of production. At the same time, he wrote articles for German periodicals on aspects of English life, including English law, the suffragettes, farm policy, Galsworthy and the state of English universities.2 In 1913 he married Hedda Gagliardi, by whom he had two daughters. They remained together throughout his life and frequently cooperated in theoretical work. On the outbreak of the First World War, in August 1914, Korsch returned to Germany. Because he opposed the war he was demoted from the rank of a reserve lieutenant to a corporal; but although he never carried a weapon, he was wounded and twice decorated with the Iron Cross. After the war, in 1919, he became a lecturer at Jena University. The war marked the beginning of his active political life and of his most intense period of theoretical production. In 1917 he joined the Independent German Socialist Party (USPD) which had split from the official German Social Democratic Party (SPD) to the left. When the USPD itself split in 192.0, Korsch went with the majority faction into the German Communist Party (the KPD) although he had reservations about the Twenty-one Points which formed the Leninist conditions for membership of the Communist International. In this period, after the November 1918 overthrow of the Kaiser and the declaration of the Weimar Republic, much of Europe, and particularly Germany, was in a state of revolu- 1. Cf. 'Die Fabian Society', Du Tat, IV, 8; 'Beitrlige zur Kennmis des englischen Rechts', Zeiuchriftfor Internationalu Recht, XIV; 'Die Freiheiti n England', Du Tat, V, 7; 'Problemeund Aussichtenenglischer Universitatsentwicklung', Du Tat, VI, 4; 'Galsworthy', Du Tat, V, 9. An Introduction 9 tionary ferment. The Spartacist rising in Berlin (January 1919) and the Munich Soviet Republic (April 1919) were both bloodily suppressed. But for two years there was an active and widespread movement for workers' councils inspired by a varied set of Marxist and anarcho-syndicalist ideas.' Korsch participated actively in this movement which he believed to be realizing many of the ideas he had developed in pre-war London. He was a member of the Berlin Socialization Com­ mittee and contributed to the revolutionary magazine Arheiterrat. His writings on workers' councils over this period fall into two phases: between 1918 and 192.0 they reflected the imme­ diacy and optimism of the movement; between 192.0 and 192.2. they expressed its decline in activity and the need for more critical reflection. When the movement was at its height he concentrated on elaborating a hypothetical economic system for a national economy based on workers' councils. Each plant was to be run by a factory council, which was to be the constitutive institution of proletarian democracy. In What is Socia/itation? (March 1919) he sets out a system of economic organization, called 'industrial autonomy', in which every branch of the national industry would be run by a committee coordinating the interests of both producers and consumers.' Each individual factory would have a limited freedom within its industry. Decisions would relate to the volume of produc­ tion, the conditions of work and the division of earnings. In the first stage of this system the means of production would be socialized and workers would still be paid according to output; 3. Cf. P. V. Oertzen, Betriehsrate in der Novemherrevolution (Droste Verlag, Dusseldorf, 1963). 4. His most imponant textsfr om this period are reprinted in Schrifien {ur So{ialisierung(Europaische Verlagsanstalt, 1969). His role and ideas are discussed in Oertzen, op. cit., and in G. E. Rusconi, 'Korsch e la strategia consiliare-sindicale', Prohlemi del Socialismo, no. 41, 1969. 10 An Introduction in the second stage, labour itself would be socialized and workers would be paid according to their needs. In this work Korsch is concerned not only to provide the positive content he felt was absent from pre-war socialism, but also to attack the reformist and social-democratic concepts of 'nationaliza­ tion' and 'workers' participation' then prevalent in Germany, which served to deflect the councils' movement from its revolutionary aims. These reformist conceptions fo und their expression in a Reichstag law of February 1920. As German capitalism consolidated itself, and the councils' movement declined, Korsch tried to analyse the reasons for the failure of the upsurge of 1918-20. While other Marxists correctly stressed the absence of a revolutionary organization to seize power, Korsch emphasized that the theoretical and cultural preconditions for such a seizure of power were also lacking. 'In the fateful months after November 1918, when the organized political power of the bourgeoisie was smashed and outwardly there was nothing else in the way of the transition from capitalism to socialism, the great chance was never seized because the socio-psychological preconditions for its seizure were lacking. For there was nowhere to be found any decisive heliefin the immediate realizability of a socialist economic system, which could have swept the masses along with it and provided a clear knowledge of the nature of the firststeps to be taken.'a Korsch ascribed the defeat of the German November Revolution to the absence of ideological preparation and political leadership. This analysis characterized much of his subsequent work. His book Arheitsrecht fur Betriehsriite ('Labour Law for Factory Councils'), written in 19l.2, was based on a course of lectures he gave to workers, and repre­ sented an attempt to provide a proletarian law for workers' s. ScAriften fur So{ialisurung, p. 74. An Introduction 11 councils. II Korsch's earlier juridical training is evident in this work, which argues that the law relating to labour is a crucial area of bourgeois ideology and expresses the productive relations constitutive of a capitalist society. Korsch thought it was a key ideological task of the revolutionary movement to prepare a proletarian legal expression of future socialist relations of production.7 It may be said that this text on the councils, written after Korsch had joined the KPD, had a more Leninist character than his earlier work. In contrast to the Dutch leftists, Pannekoek and Gorter, it stresses the need for a party and for trade unions as well as for councils, although it still accords primacy to the councils within this triangular set of proletarian institutions.8 It assumes through­ out that the suspension of political life in the Soviets in Russia was a merely temporary occurrence, imposed on the Bolshe­ viks by famine and Civil War. Korsch's work on factory councils and its incipient develop­ ment towards Leninism contrasts with that of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who was engaged in the Turin Soviet movement over the same period.9 Like Korsch, Gramsci tried to theorize the spontaneous movement of workers' power released by the 1914-18 war. Both thought that a future revolutionary State could be prefigured by the 6. Reprinted, except for some sectionson the 1920 Reichstag legisla- tion, as ArheitsrechtJur Betriehsriite (Europaische Verlagsanstalt, 1968). 7. ibid., p. 26. 8. ibid., pp. I 38ff. 9. Antonio Gramsci, 'Soviets in Italy', New Left Review, S I, with an introduction. Other relevant aspects of Gramsci's thought are discussed in John M. Cammett, Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Com­ munism (Stanford University Press, 1967). This also narrates Gramsci's relations to Bordiga, Korsch's Italian ally in the inner-partystruggles in the middle 1920S. It is because of this alliance that Korsch's group criticized Gramsci's work in Ordine Nuovo as 'an idealist infection of Italian Communism' (Gerlach, in Schriften {ur So{ialisierung, p. I I).