Читать книгу Historical materialism and the economics of Karl Marx - Benedetto Croce - Страница 5

1. Scope of essay: Labriola's book implies that historical materialism is not a philosophy of history: Distinction between a philosophy of history and philosophising about history: Reason why two have been confused: Materialistic theory of history as stated by Labriola not an attempt to establish a law of history: This contrasted with theories of monists, and teleologists: Engels' statement that it is a new method erroneous: New content not new method.

Any reader of Labriola's book who tries to obtain from it a precise concept of the new theory of history, will reach in the first instance a conclusion which must appear to him evident and incontestable, and which I sum up in the following statement: 'historical materialism, so-called, is not a philosophy of history.' Labriola does not state this denial explicitly; it may even be granted that, in words, he sometimes says exactly the opposite.[3] But, if I am not mistaken, the denial is contained implicitly in the restrictions which he places on the meaning of the theory.

The philosophical reaction of realism overthrew the systems built up by teleology and metaphysical dogmatism, which had limited the field of the historian. The old philosophy of history was destroyed. And, as if in contempt and depreciation, the phrase, 'to construct a philosophy of history,' came to be used with the meaning: 'to construct a fanciful and artificial and perhaps prejudiced history.'

It is true that of late books have begun to re-appear actually having as their title the 'philosophy of history.' This might seem to be a revival, but it is not. In fact their subject is a very different one. These recent productions do not aim at supplying a new philosophy of history, they simply offer some philosophising about history. The distinction deserves to be explained.

The possibility of a philosophy of history presupposes the possibility of reducing the sequence of history to general concepts. Now, whilst it is possible to reduce to general concepts the particular factors of reality which appear in history and hence to construct a philosophy of morality or of law, of science or of art, and a general philosophy, it is not possible to work up into general concepts the single complex whole formed by these factors, i.e. the concrete fact, in which the historical sequence consists. To divide it into its factors is to destroy it, to annihilate it. In its complex totality, historical change is incapable of reduction except to one concept, that of development: a concept empty of everything that forms the peculiar content of history. The old philosophy of history regarded a conceptual working out of history as possible; either because by introducing the idea of God or of Providence, it read into the facts the aims of a divine intelligence; or because it treated the formal concept of development as including within itself, logically, the contingent determinations. The case of positivism is strange in that, being neither so boldly imaginative as to yield to the conceptions of teleology and rational philosophy, nor so strictly realistic and intellectually disciplined as to attack the error at its roots, it has halted halfway, i.e. at the actual concept of development and of evolution, and has announced the philosophy of evolution as the true philosophy of history: development itself—as the law which explains development! Were this tautology only in question little harm would result; but the misfortune is that, by a too easy confusion, the concept of evolution often emerges, in the hands of the positivists, from the formal emptiness which belongs to it in truth, and acquires a meaning or rather a pretended meaning, very like the meanings of teleology and metaphysics. The almost religious unction and reverence with which one hears the sacred mystery of evolution spoken of gives sufficient proof of this.

From such realistic standpoints, now as always, any and every philosophy of history has been criticised. But the very reservations and criticisms of the old mistaken constructions demand a discussion of concepts, that is a process of philosophising: although it may be a philosophising which leads properly to the denial of a philosophy of history. Disputes about method, arising out of the needs of the historian, are added. The works published in recent years embody different investigations of this kind, and in a plainly realistic sense, under the title of philosophy of history. Amongst these I will mention as an example a German pamphlet by Simmel, and, amongst ourselves a compendious introduction by Labriola himself. There are, undoubtedly, still philosophies of history which continue to be produced in the old way: voices clamantium in deserto, to whom may be granted the consolation of believing themselves the only apostles of an unrecognised truth.

Now the materialistic theory of history, in the form in which Labriola states it, involves an entire abandonment of all attempt to establish a law of history, to discover a general concept under which all the complex facts of history can be included.

I say 'in the form in which he states it,' because Labriola is aware that several sections of the materialistic school of history tend to approximate to these obsolete ideas.

One of these sections, which might be called that of the monists, or abstract materialists, is characterised by the introduction of metaphysical materialism into the conception of history.

As the reader knows, Marx, when discussing the relation between his opinions and Hegelianism employed a pointed phrase which has been taken too often beside the point. He said that with Hegel history was standing on its head and that it must be turned right side up again in order to replace it on its feet. For Hegel the idea is the real world, whereas for him (Marx) 'the ideal is nothing else than the material world' reflected and translated by the human mind. Hence the statement so often repeated, that the materialistic view of history is the negation or antithesis of the idealistic view. It would perhaps be convenient to study once again, accurately and critically, these asserted relations between scientific socialism and Hegelianism. To state the opinion which I have formed on the matter; the link between the two views seems to me to be, in the main, simply psychological. Hegelianism was the early inspiration of the youthful Marx, and it is natural that everyone should link up the new ideas with the old as a development, an amendment, an antithesis. In fact, Hegel's Ideas—and Marx knew this perfectly well—are not human ideas, and to turn the Hegelian philosophy of history upside down cannot give us the statement that ideas arise as reflections of material conditions. The inverted form would logically be this: history is not a process of the Idea, i.e. of a rational reality, but a system of forces: to the rational view is opposed the dynamic view. As to the Hegelian dialectic of concepts it seems to me to bear a purely external and approximate resemblance to the historical notion of economic eras and of the antithetical conditions of society. Whatever may be the value of this suggestion, which I express with hesitation, recognising the difficulty of the problems connected with the interpretation and origin of history;—this much is evident, that metaphysical materialism, at which Marx and Engels, starting from the extreme Hegelian left, easily arrived, supplied the name and some of the components of their view of history. But both the name and these components are really extraneous to the true character of their conception. This can be neither materialistic nor spiritualistic, nor dualistic nor monadistic: within its limited field the elements of things are not presented in such a way as to admit of a philosophical discussion whether they are reducible one to another, and are united in one ultimate source. What we have before us are concrete objects, the earth, natural production, animals; we have before us man, in whom the so-called psychical processes appear as differentiated from the so-called physiological processes. To talk in this case of monism and materialism is to talk nonsense. Some socialist writers have expressed surprise because Lange, in his classic History of Materialism, does not discuss historical materialism. It is needless to remark that Lange was familiar with Marxian socialism. He was, however, too cautious to confuse the metaphysical materialism with which he was concerned, with historical materialism which has no essential connection with it, and is merely a way of speaking.

But the metaphysical materialism of the authors of the new historical doctrine, and the name given to the latter, have been not a little misleading. I will refer as an example to a recent and bad little book, which seems to me symptomatic, by a sufficiently accredited socialist writer, Plechanow.[4] The author, designing to study historical materialism, thinks it needful to go back to Holbach and Helvetius. And he waxes indignant at metaphysical dualism and pluralism, declaring that 'the most important philosophical systems were always monistic, that is they interpreted matter and spirit as merely two classes of phenomena having a single and indivisible cause.' And in reference to those who maintain the distinction between the factors in history, he exclaims: 'We see here the old story, always recurring, of the struggle between eclecticism and monism, the story of the dividing walls; here nature, there spirit, etc.' Many will be amazed at this unexpected leap from the materialistic study of history into the arms of monism, in which they were unaware that they ought to have such confidence.

Labriola is most careful to avoid this confusion: 'Society is a datum,' he says, 'history is nothing more than the history of society.' And he controverts with equal energy and success the naturalists, who wish to reduce the history of man to the history of nature, and the verbalists, who claim to deduce from the name materialism the real nature of the new view of history. But it must appear, even to him, that the name might have been more happily chosen, and that the confusion lies, so to speak, inherent in it. It is true that old words can be bent to new meanings, but within limits and after due consideration.

In regard to the tendency to reconstruct a materialistic philosophy of history, substituting an omnipresent Matter for an omnipresent Idea, it suffices to re-assert the impossibility of any such construction, which must become merely superfluous and tautologous unless it abandoned itself to dogmatism. But there is another error, which is remarked among the followers of the materialistic school of history, and which is connected with the former, viz., to anticipate harm not only in the interpretation of history but also in the guidance of practical activities. I refer to the teleological tendencies (abstract teleology), which also Labriola opposes with a cutting attack. The very idea of progress, which has seemed to many the only law of history worth saving out of the many devised by philosophical and non-philosophical thinkers, is by him deprived of the dignity of a law, and reduced to a sufficiently narrow significance. The idea of it, says Labriola, is 'not only empirical, but always incidental and hence limited': progress 'does not influence the sequence of human affairs like destiny or fate, nor like the command of a law.' History teaches us that man is capable of progress; and we can look at all the different series of events from this point of view: that is all. No less incidental and empirical is the idea of historical necessity, which must be freed from all remnants of rationalism and of transcendentalism, so that we see in it the mere recognition of the very small share left in the sequence of events, to individuals and personal free will.

It must be admitted that a little of the blame for the teleological and fatalistic misunderstandings fall on Marx himself. Marx, as he once had to explain, liked to 'coquette' with the Hegelian terminology: a dangerous weapon, with which it would have been better not to trifle. Hence it is now thought necessary to give to several of his statements a somewhat broad interpretation in agreement with the general trend of his theories.[5] Another excuse lies in the impetuous confidence which, as in the case of any practical work, accompanies the practical activities of socialism, and engenders beliefs and expectations which do not always agree with prudent critical and scientific thought. It is strange to see how the positivists, newly converted to socialism, exceed all the others (see the effect of a good school!) in their teleological beliefs, and their facile predeterminations. They swallow again what is worst in Hegelianism, which they once so violently opposed without recognising it. Labriola has finely said that the very forecasts of socialism are merely morphological in nature; and, in fact, neither Marx nor Engels would ever have asserted in the abstract that communism must come about by an unavoidable necessity, in the manner in which they foresaw it. If history is always accidental, why in this western Europe of ours, might not a new barbarism arise owing to the effect of incalculable circumstances? Why should not the coming of communism be either rendered superfluous or hastened by some of those technical discoveries, which, as Marx himself has proved, have hitherto produced the greatest revolutions in the course of history?

I think then that better homage would be rendered to the materialistic view of history, not by calling it the final and definite philosophy of history but rather by declaring that properly speaking it is not a philosophy of history. This intrinsic nature which is evident to those who understand it properly, explains the difficulty which exists in finding for it a satisfactory theoretical statement; and why to Labriola it appears to be only in its beginnings and yet to need much development. It explains too why Engels said (and Labriola accepts the remark), that it is nothing more than a new method; which means a denial that it is a new theory. But is it indeed a new method? I must acknowledge that this name method does not seem to me altogether accurate. When the philosophical idealists tried to arrive at the facts of history by inference, this was truly a new method; and there may still exist some fossil of those blessed times, who makes such attempts at history. But the historians of the materialistic school employ the same intellectual weapons and follow the same paths as, let us say, the philological historians. They only introduce into their work some new data, some new experiences. The content is different, not the nature of the method.