PARTISAN REVIEW
cise of political power by the proletariat acting as a class is funda–
mental and, compared to it, all other aspects of his doctrine are
secondary. In the final analysis it is the main factor in any judgment
that can be made of the Marxist system. But if we admit that the hy–
pothesis is no longer valid, what becomes of the rest of the doctrine?
There is no necessary logical connection between Marx's funda–
mental hypothesis and his economic doctrine. All that Marx could
claim to demonstrate in his economic studies was that capitalism is
not an eternal but an historical mode of production, the functioning
of which becomes, by the very laws of its development, more and
more unstable. This conclusion served to confirm Marx in his funda–
mental hypothesis, but the former was by no means logically implied
in the latter. What remains of Marx's economic doctrine must be
determined by utterly different criteria. The same may be concluded
of the historical, sociological, or philosophic aspects of his doctrine.
What is actually destroyed by the collapse of the fundamental
hypothesis is the validity of an esoteric Marxist system standing
in opposition to the totality of profane (read:
bourgeois)
knowl–
edge. But that system was a construction of the Marxist epigoni
rather than of Marx himself. Marx's contribution should be con–
sidered in relation to our present body of scientific knowledge, and
the value of any of its parts should then be determined by scientific
criteria.
The problem of the fundamental hypothesis has provoked two
opposed yet complementary attitudes. One attitude is to shun politics
and to have no further aim than to forget as speedily and as com–
pletely as possible the years spent in the Marxist movement. The
other is to take the fundamental hypothesis as an axiom and to
refuse categorically to examine it. The two attitudes, one as false as
the other, finally reinforce each other. It is the task of our reason,
if this dilemma is ever to be resolved, to discover such possibilities
of action as may exist, along with the most suitable means of realiz–
ing them.
If,
as seems only too clear, the proletariat has shown itself
to be incapable of filling the political role originally assigned to it by
the authors of the Manifesto, that does not mean it is condemned
to remain a purely passive factor in the historical process. Quite the
contrary; the belief in a steady decline is as ill-founded as that of
continuous progress.
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