Social Theory and the Crisis of Marxism

225 Pages·1990·8.72 MB·English

by  Joseph McCarney

Social Theory
and the
Crisis of Marxism
First published by Verso 1990
O Joseph McCarney 1990
All rights reserved
Verso
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Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
McCarney, Joseph 1941 -
Social theoja nd the crisis of Marxism.
1. Marxism
I. Title
335.4
ISBN 0-8609 1-231-0
ISBN 0-86091-948-X pbk
US Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McCarney, Joe.
Social theory and the crisis of Marxism / Joseph McCarney.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-86091-231-0. - ISBN 0-86091-948-X (pbk.)
1. Marxian school of sociology. I. Title.
HM24.M354 1990
301-+c20
Printed in Great Britain by Bookcraft (Bath) Ltd
Typeset in Times by Leaper & Gard Ltd
Contents
Preface vii
1 The Nature of the Problem 1
PART I The Critique of Society
2 The Frankfurt School: Adorno
3 The Frankfurt School: Marcuse
4 Scientific Critique: Truth and Contradiction
5 Scientific Critique: Rationality
PART I1 Marx's Social Science
6 The Standpoint of Evaluation
7 The Dialectic of Classes
8 Reason in History
PART III The Crisis of Marxism
9 The Ontology of Crisis
10 Towards a Resolution
Notes
Index
Preface
It is frequently asserted, and still more frequently assumed, that
Marxism as an intellectual tradition is currently in a state of crisis. These
assertions are sometimes made in tones of triumph or gloating by
declared opponents of everything the tradition is taken to represent.
Sometimes, however, they come regretfully or despairingly from its
friends; indeed from those who locate themselves within the tradition, or
would do so, were it not for what they regard as its present pathological
condition. It seems to be of the nature of a tradition of thought that if
substantial groups of such people believe it to be in crisis, this is itself
grounds for accepting that it is. Hence, the diagnosis has to be taken
seriously. It is given added weight by the ease with which an impressive
set of historical determinants may be invoked as background. The list is
a familiar one, and will in any case have to be reviewed in the later
course of this discussion. Here one may simply mention the many
defeats and disappointments suffered by the socialist and working-class
movements in the West, more immediately in the past two decades.
There is also the profound absence of working models of a fully
achieved socialist society. Those who seek such a model are confronted
instead by 'actually existing socialism' with its moribund official
doctrines and apparent shift towards market solutions to its economic
problems. The effects of these determinants are felt in chronic low
morale among Marxist intellectuals, a dearth of rich or compelling new
lines of inquiry, the development of various kinds of 'post-Marxist'
thought, and the surrender of the ideological initiative to the motley
forces of the radical right. It is of course worth bearing in mind, as Louis
Althusser reminded us near the start of the latest episode of 'crisis talk',
that 'the crisis of Marxism is not a recent phenomenon' and that
'Marxism has in its history passed through a long series of crises and
transformations'.' Such reminders are of value in helping to place
vii
viii SOCIAL THEORY AND THE CRISIS OF MARXISM
current developments in perspective. Yet in themselves they take away
nothing of the gravity and ominous implications of such developments.
In particular, they can offer no reassurance that what we are witnessing
is not indeed the final phase of an epoch in intellectual history. The
possibility that the present 'crisis of Marxism' may be terminal has still to
be considered in the light of whatever powers of judgement we can bring
to bear. Any temptation to treat references to it as cries of 'Wolf!' has to
be restrained by remembering also that in the story the cry proved in the
end all too justified, a cry from the heart.
There seems Little room for doubt as to what is the chief question of a
philosophical kind to arise at this point. It is the mundane and obstinate
one of what precisely may be supposed to be in crisis; of how the ident-
ity of the tradition alleged to be at risk is to be specified. In asking this,
one need not be assuming that 'Marxism' denotes some fixed object with
an essence to be captured if one has the necessary metaphysical skills.
The question may be understood in historical terms, and posed in the
interests of disclosing whatever distinctions are needed to make sense of
the history. It will be focused initially on a determinate body of work:
the achievement of Marx and, more broadly, of 'classical Marxism'. It
becomes the question of whether a set of theses can be identified to
which this body of work may be said to be inescapably committed, and
which demands some similar commitment from all who claim a substan-
tial allegiance to it. In asking it one may draw comfort from the fact that
Marx, although not given to essentialism, had an acute sense of these
matters, as shown most pungently in the notorious denial that he was a
'Marxist'. Our problem, it may be said, is that of reconstructing the
criteria which serve to make such a judgement intelligible. The rewards
of doing so are not the polemical ones of being able to separate sheep
from goats, whichever way round the evaluative force of the classifi-
cation is supposed to work. The discussion of who is and who is not a
'Marxist' is by now almost entirely pointless, and perhaps never had
much point for anyone other than Marx himself. There remains a need
to become clear about the underlying conceptual realities, however one
then chooses to situate oneself in relation to them, and with whatever
nuances and qualifications. It should be added that, of course, there
already exists a superabundance of answers to our question. The present
attempt presupposes that there is still something new to be said or, more
accurately, that there are some old and neglected truths which need
urgently to be restated. The responsibility for vindicating this will rest on
the discussion that follows.
Even in a prefatory sketch it should be possible to state the main task
more precisely. For one may hope to discern the core of the difficulties
to be tackled, the crux from whose resolution a means of dealing with
PREFACE ix
the others may be derived. This key issue may be approached by asking
how Man conceived, in the most general terms, the nature of his
intellectual life-work; that is, of the logical status of his science of
society. Put in these terms the problem may be said, without much risk
of being contentious or question-begging, to turn on a quite specific
range of considerations. Man, it may be suggested, thought of himself -
and his view has been generally endorsed, at least by Marxists - as,
above aU else, a revolutionary thinker and theorist of revolution. He
insists on the revolutionary character of his work in terms that suggest
that its whole significance derives from being in some way or other at the
service of revolutionary social change. It would not be too much to say
that the work demands to be conceived as being, just in virtue of its own
nature, a force for such change or an element of it. To put it more
soberly, the point is that his science asks to be considered as having not
merely the usual descriptive and explanatory relationship to its object,
but a practical significance or bearing for it also. The question is: how
did Man conceive of this integral dimension of the practical? What is
the precise relationship of his revolutionary theory to revolutionary
practice by virtue of which the theory is constituted as revolutionary? It
will be demonstrated in what follows that, when the key question is
formulated in this way, a certain kind of answer forces itself on one's
attention with overwhelming textual authority and unrivalled hermeneu-
tic power for making sense of the Marxist project. It is this answer that is
presently ignored or overlaid with accretions, and that needs urgently to
be reconstructed and placed at the forefront of debate.
If one seeks to explain our contemporary cloud of unknowing it is
plainly to history that one must turn; to the changing fortunes of Marx's
intellectual legacy. It will be necessary to take account of the barriers
imposed in the Second International period against the transmission of
some crucial features of that legacy. More significant in the present
context, and much more difficult to deal with, is the smoke-screen laid
down by the historical tendency known as 'Western Marxism'. The price
for removing these obstacles to understanding is that any idea of a
unified Marxist tradition, rich in continuous achievement, has to be
abandoned. The tradition emerges as irremediably twisted and riven,
indeed as broken-backed. For the main forms of Marxism in the West
will be seen to have failed to carry forward anything of substance from
the classical programme for social theory. From this perspective, claims
of a crisis must appear to have deeper foundations than is usually
suspected even by those who press them most vociferously. On the other
hand, it may be suggested that our situation is such that only the most
radical ground-clearing can now offer prospects of an adequate space on
which to build. Moreover, the resource represented by the original
X SOCIAL THEORY AND THE CRISIS OF MARXISM
legacy is not thereby destroyed or made inaccessible. It may still be
possible to establish organic links with it. These in turn may encourage
the kinds of creative development needed to make Marxism once again
a living force in the intellectual world. Those whose approach to the
issues is shaped in any measure by Hegelian dialectic will be accustomed
to the idea that a crisis may be 'a time of birth and transition to a new
peri~d'.~B ut such thoughts are more generally available. Thus
Althusser, perhaps the most determined contemporary opponent of the
Hegel connection, insists that the phrase 'the crisis of Marxism' must be
given 'a completely different sense from collapse and death'. Then we
can say: 'At last the crisis of Marxism has exploded! At last it is in full
view! At last something vital and alive can be liberated by this crisis and
in this crisis."
These are stirring words. The aim of the present work is to discover
what, if any, rational grounds there are for such optimism.
I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness, extending over a number of
years, for conversations on the topics of this book, and for criticisms of
earlier versions of parts of it, to Chris Arthur, Istviin Mtszkos, Peter
Osborne, Sean Sayers, Tony Smith and, most of all, to Roy Edgley.
They will understand when I say that I am almost equally struck by the
amount we found to agree on in these exchanges and by the way they
bore out the dialectical truth that 'Opposition is true Friendship'.
I am indebted to Robin Blackbum for helpful suggestions concerning
Herbert Marcuse, and for his interest in, and encouragement of, the
project as a whole.
Finally, I would like to express my thanks to Aine Murtagh and Carin
Dean for the exemplary skill and patience with which they typed the
manuscript.
The Nature of the Problem
This book is a study of a central aspect of the Marxist intellectual tradi-
tion. It is addressed to concepts of social theory within that tradition,
and, more especially, to concepts of the nature and status of Marxist
social theory itself. Thus its topic comprises forms of self-understanding
that are at the same time views on the proper or optimal ways of doing
certain kinds of theoretical work. It seeks both to explicate these ideas
and to assess them critically. If its primary objectives are achieved, some
further questions should come into view. Provided, at any rate, that
some measure of viability is accorded the Marxist project, one may ask
how far it has actually been carried through and what are its future
prospects. These further questions will not be treated systematically
here. Nevertheless, the main discussion should yield a necessary condi-
tion of saying something useful about them, as well as a strong tempta-
tion to try to do so.
To sketch even our primary tasks is to delineate a field of study too
vast to be treated satisfactorily within the compass of the present work.
It may be well to make clear that there will be no attempt to deal equally
here with all of its regions. To do so should also serve to indicate the
historical range of the discussion. The main limitation may be described
as follows. There is a large body of work conventionally located within
the confines of Marxism which views Marxist social theory as essentially
a descriptive and explanatory theory of unique authority and scope. Its
major achievement is asserted, or assumed, to be the discovery of
scientific laws of history and, specifically, of the mechanism that ensures
the downfall of capitalism and its replacement by socialism. Using a
familiar shorthand, this may be labelled the Marxism of the Second
International. There are a number of reasons for not treating it here in
its own right. The first is that there seems to be no substantial set of
philosophical issues peculiar to the 'Marxist' version of such a science of
2 SOCIAL THEORY AND THE CRISIS OF MARXISM
historical laws. If there are any, they could in any case be reached only
through an analysis of the coherence and feasibility of the general
programme, a task that lies well beyond our scope. A second, and
related, point is that the 'Marxist' version cannot, as will become clear,
be said to draw its inspiration from what is most distinctive and persis-
tent in Marx's own meta-theoretical reflections. Finally, one should note
that it does not figure at all prominently in current debates in the West,
and indeed, could scarcely be said to represent a live option in them.
That there are good reasons for this state of affairs is itself implied by
the thesis of the present work. It would be perverse to seek to revive the
Second International doctrine merely to knock it on the head again. To
do so would be to introduce a pointless loop into the argument. Setting
the doctrine aside, one can, using some more conventional shorthand,
identify our chief areas of concern as 'classical' and 'Western' Marxism.
The linking of these areas may be given a positive justification. It
consists in a thematic affinity between them. The nature of the affinity
will be indicated roughly at first and then more precisely as the discus-
sion proceeds. It concerns the relationship of theory to practice and,
more specifically, the assumption of the peculiarly intimate character of
this relationship. Some well-known formulations can serve to give an
immediate purchase on the theme. Classical Marxism may be repre-
sented by Engels's designation 'scientific socialism'. This has usually
been taken, as was plainly intended, as postulating a socialism informed
through and through by the insights and authority of science. Engels's
use of the term seems also to carry the suggestion of a science that has
somehow, in virtue of its own constitution, a socialist character. Thus, he
provides the gloss that scientific socialism is 'the theoretical expression
of the proletarian movement'.' This in turn has a certain canonical status
as an echo of various programmatic statements by Mam2 The
relationship 'being the expression of seems to promise as immediate and
transparent a connection between theory and practice as may be
conceived.
If one seeks a Western Marxist illustration of the theme, there is a
vast field from which to choose. It may suffice to cite a similarly notori-
ous instance: Gramsci's adoption of Labriola's phrase 'the philosophy of
practice' as his name for Marxism. Clearly, this gives practice an
integral, indeed definitional, role in conceptualizing theory. In Gramsci's
discussion a central place is taken by 'the concept of the unity of theory
and practice'. The identification of theory and practice is, he declares, 'a
critical act, through which practice is demonstrated rational and neces-
sary, and theory realistic and rati~nal'.T~h ese are striking claims: the
reciprocally constituting and life-giving roles of theory and practice
could scarcely be more dramatically affirmed. It should also be said that,