Thanks for your detailed comments. It’s the only real feedback I have gotten on this piece. My replies to your comments are interpolated throughout.—Jim
************************** Article: "Conrad writes that doubters, while they may claim to be Marxists, are engaging in the kind of "dishonest behaviour [to be] expected from sworn enemies"; are "stabbing [Marx] in the back"; are "faddish", exhibit "fickleness", "shallowness" and often end up as "turncoats" - and all this before we get the faintest inkling of what these critics have to say: a subject Conrad never goes into very deeply. Conrad's tone, perfectly appropriate for social democrats who have just voted war credits to the kaiser in the Reichstag, is a little out of place regarding interpretations of the Hegelian dialectic or speculations about the nature of the universe."
^^^^ CB: Engels is more a summing up of the major principles of Western natural science as reached in his time. He finds dialectical logic in that development. In his several books in this area he specifically distinguishes his approach from philosophical speculation about the nature of the universe. ---------
JC: I accept this, but it is a mere turn of phrase, not essential to my argument. ^^^^^ Article: These works do not, however, explicitly address broader philosophical questions - more specifically, the relation between Hegel and Marx. For this, Marxists of the time turned to the only places where these subjects received extensive treatment: Anti-Duehring and Ludwig Feuerbach and the outcome of classical German philosophy, both by Engels. Principally from these writings, the great Marxists of the Second and Third Internationals derived the world outlook called dialectical materialism, which later hardened into an arid dogma in the hands of the Stalinists.
^^^^ CB: Marx read and wrote some of the chapters of _Anti-Durhing_ which has the same basic ideas as _Ludwig Feuerbach_ and the other philosophy essays by Engels. Marx wrote the "Theses on Feuerbach"
which sets out many of the principles of Engels' philosophical essays.
JC: Marx wrote one chapter of “Anti-Duhring”, to be precise. It was on the history of value theory, not philosophy. But, in general, I acknowledge throughout the piece that neither Marx nor Engels THOUGHT they were contradicting one another. And, strictly speaking, they weren't. I simply assert that a reading of their respective accounts of the Marx-Hegel relationship reveals very different emphases. This is somewhat puzzling, but not, as you seem to think, a major flaw in my argument. People aren’t always aware of the full implications of what they write or say. I state that where text and biography conflict, text must decide.
^^^^^^ Yet, in the late 1920s and 30s, a new, previously unknown part of the Marxian corpus began to emerge from Moscow. The Critique of Hegel's philosophy of right, the Economic and philosophical manuscripts of 1844, The German ideology and the Grundrisse - all inaccessible to previous generations - saw the light of print for the first time in these decades, though initially in very limited editions. A pioneering treatment of Marx's philosophical writings, From Hegel to Marx (1936), by the American philosophy professor, Sidney Hook, did not receive the attention it deserved at the time, so pervasive was the Stalinist influence. (Unlike the writers Conrad takes to task, Hook actually did turn his coat, later becoming a fanatical cold warrior; although this does not diminish the importance of his contribution.) Only in the late 1950s and early 60s were Marx's philosophical writings more widely translated and read. And, no matter how disagreeable it may be to Conrad and other keepers of the orthodox flame, the account of the dialectic and the Marx-Hegel relationship they contain is quite different from what was previously the commonly accepted - and often liturgically incanted - Engelian version.
^^^^^
CB: Engels was co-equal author of the _The German Ideology_
JC: Engels was indeed the co-author of the GI, but not the “co-equal” author. He no doubt made a contribution, but anyone familiar with the styles of the two men can tell that the essential first chapter is mainly the work of Marx.
^^^^^ The more recently discovered texts sparked the interest of radicalised intellectuals uninfluenced by Stalinism - some from the Frankfurt school; many associated with the 1960s new left . Whatever the shortcomings of Karl Korsch, George Lichtheim, Alfred Schmidt and others Conrad disparages, their writings are among the first to grapple with this previously little known side of Marx.
^^^^ CB: It certainly was not little known to Engels. Engels was a Young Hegelian and follower of Feuerbach's atheist critique of Hegel. He is
there at the inception of Marxism with Marx as co-founder.
JC: Go figure. Engels, at any rate, never attempted to publish any of the early writings. ^^^
Many of these writers (though not all) are overly dismissive of Engels and the wealth of knowledge he brought to his collaboration with Marx; some are far too quick to draw a direct line of descent from Engels' rendering of dialectic materialism to its vulgarised Stalinist diamat version. But, for all their faults, the best among these scholars made a contribution to the history of Marxist thought that should not be dismissed.
^^^^^^
How to account for the differing philosophical approaches of Marx and Engels, in light of their intimate intellectual relationship, or of the fact that Marx read and pre-approved Anti-Duehring?
The dialectic according to Engels Anyone in the least familiar with Marxist theory knows about Engels' statements that Marx stood Hegel on his feet, or extracted the rational kernel of the Hegelian system from its mystical shell. ^^^^ CB: I believe both Marx and Engels used this metaphor
Here's Marx using it completely and explicitly in the Second German Preface to _Capital- ' "My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of ?the Idea,? he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ?the Idea.? With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.
The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of ?Das Kapital,? it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre Epigonoi [Epigones ? B?chner, D?hring and others] who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing?s time treated Spinoza, i.e., as a ?dead dog.? I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel?s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the
mystical shell.
JC: You are right. They both used these metaphors. That doesn’t mean they meant the same thing by them. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm
CB: I'll stop here for now. If you are unaware that Marx used the rational kernel/standing off his head metaphor explicitly in _Capital_ , I begin to consider you are not correct in your overall differentiation. That's a fairly serious flaw in your argument.
^^^^
Most are also aware of the interpretation Engels gave these metaphors. He wrote that he and Marx took what was for Hegel an idealist dialectic - ie, a dialectic of pure philosophical thought - and turned it into a materialist cosmology, in which a universe comprised of matter in motion is governed by three overarching laws: (1) the transformation of quantity into quality; (2) the interpenetration of opposites; and (3) the negation of the negation. These three laws are said to operate in different ways in every sphere of being, from physics and astronomy to the evolution of human society.
^^^^^^ CB: Marx refers to quantity into quality in _Capital_ I'll find it. I found several years ago on Marxism-Thaxis when we had one of these arguments about "Marx was different than Engels"
y.
Marx never wrote anything directly disputing this account.
^^^^^
CB: Which is a big flaw in your argument.
JC: No it isn’t, for reasons stated above. ^^^
What he did leave behind, however, is his own interpretation of the 'inversion' of the Hegelian dialectic, which bears little resemblance to that of Engels. Marx's version is contained in his Theses on Feuerbach, which was known to older generations of Marxists, but never fully appreciated due to its condensed, aphoristic form. A much more detailed, if less widely known, account appears in the final Manuscript, entitled 'Critique of Hegel's dialectic and general philosophy'. In order to appreciate the import of these early writings, we must take a brief detour into the dialectic according to Hegel, of which only the barest sketch can be provided here.
^^^^^ CB: But for Engels we wouldn't have the "Theses on Feuerbach". He added them as an appendix to _Ludwig Feuerbach_ I'm going to have to
go with Engels over you as to who understood them.
JC: You can decide on the basis of authority (Engels) or on the basis of logic (me). But I am hardly the only one to argue in this vein. My arguments,in fact, are derived from those of others far more authritative than myself.I await your further comments.
More later
_____________________________________________