MARXISM IN OUR TIME
27
Even more than it is a scientific doctrine, Marxism is an historic fact.
If
one
is to understand it, one must embrace it in all its scope. One then perceives
that since the birth, the apogee and the corruption of Christianity, there has
been no more considerable event in the life of humanity.
2.
This fact goes far beyond the boundaries of the class struggle and
becomes an integral part of the consciousness of modern man-no matter
what his attitude towards Marxism. It is of secondary importance to ask
one's self if the theories of value, or of surplus value, or of the accumula–
tion of capital are still completely valid. An idle question, essentially, and
even somewhat puerile. Science is never "finished"; rather, it is always
completing itself. Can science be anything except a process of continual
self-revision, an unceasing quest for a closer approach to truth? Can it
get along without hypothesis and error- the "error" of tomorrow which is
the "truth" (that is, the closest approximation to the truth) of yesterday.
It
is of minor importance, also, to point out that certain predictions of
Marx and Engels have not been confirmed by history and that, on the con–
trary, many events have taken place which they did not at all foresee.
Marx and Engels were too great, too intelligent, to believe themselves in–
fallible and to play the prophet.
It
is true-but not important-that their
followers have not always reached this level of wisdom.
It
still remains
true that Marxism has modified the thinking of the man of our times. We
are in debt to it for a renewing, a broadening of our consciousness. In what
way? Since Marx, no one seriously denies the part played by economics in
history. The relationship between economic, psychological, social and moral
factors appears today, even to the adversaries of Marxism, in an altogether
different light from that in which it appeared before Marx. It is the same
with the role of the individual in history, and with the relationship of the
individual to the masses and to society. Marxism, finally, gives us what
I call "the historical sense"; it makes us conscious that we live in a world
which is in process of changing ; it enlightens us as to our possible function
-and our limitations-in this continual struggle and creation ; it teaches
us to integrate ourselves, with all our will, all our talents, to bring about
those historical processes that are, as the case may be, necessary, inevitable,
or desirable. And it is thus that it allows us to confer on our isolated lives
a high significance, by tying them, through a consciousness which heightens
and enriches the spiritual life, to that life-collective, innumerable, and
permanent--of which history is only the record.
This awakening of consciousness insists on action and, furthermore,
on the unity of action and thought. Here is man reconciled with himself,
whatever be the burden of his destiny. He no longer feels himself the
plaything of blind and measureless forces . He looks with clear eyes on the
worst tragedies, and even in the midst of the greatest defeats he feels
himself enlarged by his ability to understand, his will to act and to resist,
the indestructible feeling of being united in all his aspirations with the
mass of humanity in its progress through time.
