28
PARTISAN REVIEW
3.
One is no more able to deny the part played by economics in history than
the fact that the earth is round . . . And even those who argue the point do not
in the least deceive themselves. I should like to emphasize here an important
point to which not enough attention has been paid in the past. The ene·
mies of the working class have themselves largely assimilated the lessons
of Marxism. The politicians, the industrialists and bankers, the demagogues
sometimes burn the works of Marx and throw his followers into prison; but,
dealing with social realities, they pay tribute to Marxist economists and
political leaders. And if scholars refute the theory of surplus value, their
masters do not put any less energy and stubborness into the defense of the
surplus value they appropriate as their plunder from the revenues of society.
This
sub-rosa
Marxism of the enemies of socialism is in a fair way to
be–
come one of the most formidable means of defense of the privileged classes.
4.
Marxism undergoes, in its own history, the conditions of development
which is analyzes.
It
is able to rise above them only in a small degree,
since every gain of consciousness is an effect before it becomes a cause, and
remains subordinate to pre-existing social conditions. "Social being deter·
mines consciousness."
The Marxism of the imperialist epoch was split. It was nationalistic and
whole, reformist. Very few of its adherents-a Rosa Luxemburg, a Lenin,
a Trotsky, a Hermann Gorter-saw beyond the moment to horizons vaster
than those of capitalist prosperity. Either this Marxism dwelt on the heights
of philosophy far removed from imrpediate action, or it was merely remi·
niscent of the ancient Christian utopianism (which was, in our culture,
Hebrew before it was Christian: read the Prophets!).
The Marxism of the imperalist epoch was split.
It
was nationalistic and
counterrevolutionary in the countries where it had been reformist; it was
revolutionary and internationalist in Russia, the only country in which the
foundering of an
ancien regime
forced the proletariat to carry out com–
pletely its historic mission.
The Marxism of the Russian revolution was at first ardently interna–
tionalist and libertarian (the doctrine of the Communist State, the federation
of Soviets); but because of the state of siege, it soon became more and
more authoritatarian and intolerant.
1
The Marxism of the decadence of Bolshevism- that is to say, that of
the bureaucratic caste which has evicted the working class from power-is
totalitarian, despotic, amoral, and opportunist.
It
ends up in the strangest
and most revolting negations of itself.
What does this, mean except that social consciousness even in its highest
forms does not escape the effect of the realities which it expresses, which
it illuminates and which it tries to surmount.
1 As early as 1919, Bolshevism began to deny to all revolutionary dissenters the right
to political existence.
