Materialism And Historical Materialism
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Author : Anton Pannekoek

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Written: 1942;First Published: in English in the American journal New Essays, Vol VI No 2 Fall 1942;Transcription\HTML Markup: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003.Source: John Gray's Archive.


I

The evolution of Marxism to its present stage can be understood
only in connection with the social and political developments of the period in
which it arose. With the coming of capitalism in Germany there developed
simultaneously a growing opposition to the existing aristocratic absolutism. The
ascending bourgeois class needed freedom of trade and commerce, favorable
legislation, a government sympathetic to its interests, freedom of press and
assembly in order to fight unhindered for its needs and desires. But the
bourgeoisie found itself confronted instead with a hostile regime, an omnipotent
police, and press censorship which suppressed every criticism of the reactionary
government. The struggle between these forces, which led to the revolution of
1848, was first conducted on a theoretical level, as a struggle of ideas and a
criticism of the prevailing ideology. The criticism of the young bourgeois
intelligentsia was directed mainly against religion and Hegelian philosophy.

Hegelian philosophy in which the self-development of the Absolute
Idea creates the world and then, as the developing world, enters the
consciousness of men, was the philosophical guise suited to the Christianity of
the Restoration after 1815. Religion, handed down by past generations, served as
always as the theoretical basis and justification for the perpetuation of old
class relations. Since an open political struggle was still impossible, the
fight against the feudal oligarchy had to be conducted in a veiled form, as an
attack on religion. This was the task of the group of young intellectuals of
1840 among whom Marx grew up and rose to a leading position.

While still a student Marx submitted, although reluctantly, to the force of
the Hegelian method of thought and made it his own. That he chose for his
doctoral dissertation the comparison of two great materialist philosophies of
ancient Greece, Democritus and Epicurus, seems to indicate, however, that in the
deep recesses of his consciousness Marx inclined towards materialism. Shortly
thereafter he was called upon to assume the editorship of a new paper founded by
the oppositional Rheinish bourgeoisie in Cologne. Here he was drawn into the
practical problems of the political and social struggles. So well did he conduct
the fight that after one year of publication the paper was banned by the state.
It was during this period that Feuerbach made his final step towards
materialism. Feuerbach brushed aside Hegel’s fantastic system, turned to
the simple experiences of every day life, and arrived at the conclusion that
religion was a man-made product. Forty years later Engels still spoke fervently
of the liberating effect that Feuerbach’s work had on his contemporaries,
and of the enthusiasm with which Marx embraced the new ideas despite some
critical reservations. To Marx this meant a new turn in the social struggle:
from attacking a heavenly image to coming to grips openly with earthly
realities. Thus in 1843 in his essay A Criticism of the Hegelian
Philosophy of Right he wrote:

“As far as Germany is concerned the criticism of religion is
practically completed, and the criticism of religion is the basis of all
criticism ... The struggle against religion is the struggle against that world
whose spiritual aroma is religion ... . Religion is the moan of the oppressed
creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless
conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion, as the
illusory happiness of the people, is the demand for their real happiness. The
demand to abandon the illusions about their conditions is a demand to abandon a
condition which requires illusions. The criticism of religion therefore contains
potentially the criticism of the Vale of Tears whose aureole is religion.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers which adorned the chain, not that
man should wear his fetters denuded of fanciful embellishment, but that he
should throw off the chain, and break the living flower ... Thus the criticism
of heaven transforms itself into the criticism of earth, the criticism of
religion into the criticism of right, and the criticism of theology into the
criticism of politics.”

The task confronting Marx was to inquire into the realities of social life.
His study of the French Revolution and French socialism as well as English
economy and the English working class movement, in collaboration with Engels
during their stay in Paris and Brussels, led towards further elaboration of the
doctrine known as Historical Materialism. As the doctrine of social
development by way of class struggles we find the theory expounded in
“Poverty of Philosophy” (in French 1846), the
“Communist Manifesto” (1847), and in the preface to
“A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”
(1859).

Marx and Engels themselves refer to this system of thought as materialism in
opposition to the idealism of Hegel and the neo-Hegelians. What do they
understand by materialism? Engels, discussing the fundamental theoretical
problems of historical materialism in his Anti-Dühring and in
his booklet on Feuerbach, states in the latter publication:

“The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of modern
philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being ... Those who
asserted the primacy of the spirit to nature and, therefore, in the last
instance, assumed world creation in some form or other – comprised the
camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to the
various schools of materialism:”

That not only the human mind is bound up with the brain, but also that man
with his brain and mind is part and parcel of the rest of the animal kingdom and
the unorganic world, was a self-evident truth to Marx and Engels. This
conception is common to all “schools of materialism.” What
distinguishes Marxism materialism from other schools must be learned from its
various polemical works dealing with practical questions of politics and
society. To Marx materialistic thought was a working method. In his writing he
does not deal with philosophy nor does he formulate materialism into a system of
philosophy; he is utilizing it as a method for the study of the world and thus
demonstrates its validity. In the essay quoted above, for example, Marx does not
demolish the Hegelian philosophy of right by philosophical disputations, but
through an annihilating criticism of the real conditions existing in
Germany.

The materialist method replaces philosophical sophistry and disputations
around abstract concepts with the study of the real material world. Feuerbach
preceded Marx in this respect in so far as he was the first to point out that
religious concepts and ideas are derived from material conditions. Let us take a
few examples to elucidate this point. The statement “Man proposes, God
disposes” the theologian interprets from the point of view of the
omnipotence of God. The materialist on the other hand searches for the cause of
the discrepancy between expectations and results and finds it in the social
effects of commodity exchange and competition. The politician debates the
desirability of freedom and socialism; the materialist asks: from what
individuals or classes do these demands spring, what specific content do they
have, and to what social need do they correspond? The philosopher, in abstract
speculations about the essence of time, seeks to establish whether or not
absolute time exists. The materialist compares the clocks to see whether it can
be established unreservedly that two phenomena occur simultaneously, or follow
one another.

Feuerbach, too, utilized the materialist method. He saw in living man the
source of all religious ideas and concepts. The validity of his materialism,
however, depended on whether he was successful in presenting a clear and
comprehensive interpretation of religion. A materialism that leaves the problem
obscure is insufficient and will lead back to idealism. Marx pointed out that
the mere principle of taking living man as the starting point for investigation
is not enough to lead to clarity. In his theses on Feuerbach in 1845 he
formulated the essential difference between his materialist method and that of
Feuerbach. We quote:

“Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human. But the human
essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it
is the ensemble of the social relations.” (Thesis 6) “His work
consists in the dissolution of the religious world into its secular basis. He
overlooks the fact that after completing this work, the chief thing still
remains to be done. For the fact that the secular foundation lifts itself above
itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm is only to
be explained by the self-cleavage and self-contradictions of this secular basis.
The latter must itself, therefore, first be understood in its contradiction and
then, by the removal of the contradiction, revolutionized in practice.”
(Thesis 4)

Briefly, man can be understood only as a social being. From the individual
one must proceed to society and dissolve the social contradictions out of which
religion has evolved. The real world, that is the sensual and material world,
where all ideology and consciousness have their origin, is human society –
with nature in the background, of course, as the basis on which society rests
and of which it is a part altered by man.

A presentation of these ideas is to be found in the book “The
German Ideology,” written in 1845-46. The part that deals with
Feuerbach, however, was first published in 1925 by Rjazanoff, then head of the
Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow. The complete work was not published until 1932.
Here the theses on Feuerbach are worked out in greater length. Although it is
apparent that Marx wrote quite hurriedly, he nevertheless gave a brilliant
presentation of all essential ideas concerning the evolution of society which,
later, found further illumination in the propaganda pamphlet “The
Communist Manifesto” and in the preface to “The
Critique of Political Economy.”

The German Ideology is directed first of all against the
theoretical view which regarded creative consciousness and ideas developing from
ideas as the only factors that determine human history. Marx has nothing but
contempt for this point of view, “The phantoms formed in the human
brain,” he says on page 14, “are necessary sublimates of their
material, empirically-verifiable life process bound to material premises.”
It was essential to put emphasis on the real world, the material and
empirically-given world as the source of all ideology. But it was also necessary
to criticize the materialist theories that culminated in Feuerbach. As a protest
against ideology the return to biological man and his physical needs is correct,
but taking the individual as an abstract being does not offer a solution to the
question of how and why religious ideas originate. Human society in its
historical evolution is the only reality controlling human life. Only out of
society can the spiritual life of man be explained. Feuerbach, in attempting to
find an explanation of religion by a return to the “real” man did
not find the real man, because he searched for him in the individual, in the
human being generally. From this approach the world of ideas cannot be
explained. Thus he was forced to fall back on the ideology of universal human
love. “Insofar as Feuerbach is a materialist,” Marx said, “ he
does not deal with history, and insofar as he considers history, he is not a
materialist.” (The German Ideology, pp. 37-38).

What Feuerbach did not accomplish was accomplished by the historical
Materialism of Marx: an explanation of the development of man’s ideas out
of the material world. The historical development of society is brilliantly
rendered in the following sentence: “ ... Men, developing their material
production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real
existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking.”
(German Ideology, p. 14). We know reality only through experience
which, as the external world, comes to us through the medium of our senses. A
philosophical theory of knowledge will then be based on this principle: the
material, empirically given world is the reality which determines thought.

The basic epistemological problem was always what truth can be attributed to
thinking. The term “critique of knowledge,” used by the professional
philosophers for “theory of knowledge,” already implies a view point
of doubt. In his second and fifth theses on Feuerbach Marx refers to this
problem and again points out that the practical activity of man is the essential
content of his life.

“The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human
thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. In
practice man must prove the truth, i. e., the reality and power, the
“this-sidedness” of his thinking:” (Thesis 2) ...
“Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, appeals to
sensuous contemplation, but he does not conceive sensuousness as a
practical, human-sensuous activity.” (Thesis 5).

Why practical? Because man in the first place must live. His biological
organism, his faculties and his abilities and all his activity are adapted to
this very end. With these he must adapt himself to and assert himself in the
external world, i. e. nature, and as an individual in society, as well as with
his faculty of thinking, the activity of the organ of thought, the brain, and
with thought itself. Thinking is a bodily faculty. In every phase of life man
uses his power of thought to draw conclusions from his experiences on which
expectations and hopes are built and which regulate his mode of living and his
actions. The correctness of his conclusions, a condition for his survival, is
determined by the very fact of his being. Thinking is a purposeful adaptation to
life, and therefore truth can be attributed to it though not truth in an
absolute sense. But on the basis of his experiences, man derives generalizations
and laws on which his expectations are based. They are generally correct as is
witnessed by his survival. In particular instances, however, false conclusions
may be derived and hence failure and destruction. Life is a continuous process
of learning, adaptation, development. Practice alone is the unsparing test of
the correctness of thinking.

Let us first consider this in relation to natural science. Here thought finds
in practice its purest and most abstract form. This is why philosophers of
nature accept this form as the subject for their observations and pay no
attention to its similarity to the thought of every individual in his every day
activity. Yet thinking in the study of nature is only a highly developed special
field of the entire social labor process. This labor process demands an accurate
knowledge of natural phenomena and its integration into laws, in order to be
able to utilize them successfully in the field of technics. The determination of
these laws through observation of special phenomena is the task of specialists.
In the study of nature it is generally accepted that practice, in this instance
experiment, is the test of truth. Here, too, it is accepted that observed
regularities, known as “natural laws,” are generally fairly
dependable guides to human practice, and although they are frequently not
altogether correct and even disappointing, they are improved constantly and
elaborated upon through the progress of science. If at times man is referred to
as the “lawmaker of nature,” it must be added that nature very often
disregards these laws and summons man to make better ones.

The practice of life, however, comprises much more than the scientific study
of nature. The relation of the natural scientist to the world, despite his
experimentation, remains sensous-observational. To him the world is an external
thing. But in reality people deal with nature in their practical activities by
acting upon her and making her part of their existence: Through his labor man
does not oppose nature as an external or alien world. On the contrary, by the
toil of his hands he transforms the external world to such an extent that the
original natural substance is no longer discernible, and while this process goes
on, man changes, too. Thus, man creates his own world: human society in a nature
changed by him. What meaning, then, has the question of whether his thinking
leads to truth? The object of his thinking is that which he himself produces by
his physical and mental activities and which he controls through his brain. This
is not a question of partial truths such as, for instance, those of which Engels
wrote in his book on Feuerbach that the artificial production of the natural dye
alizarin would prove the validity of the chemical formula employed. [1] This is not, to repeat, a question of
partial truths in a specific field of knowledge, where the practical consequence
either affirms or refutes them. Rather the point in question here is a
philosophical one, namely, whether human thought is capable of encompassing the
real, the deepest truth of the world. That the philosopher, in his secluded
study, who is concerned exclusively with abstract philosophical concepts, which
are derived in turn from abstract scientific concepts also formulated outside of
practical life experiences, should have his doubts in the midst of this world of
shadows is easily understood. But for human beings who live and act in the real
every day world the question has no meaning. The truth of thought, says Marx, is
nothing other than power and mastery over the real world.

Of course this statement embodies a contradiction: Thinking cannot be said to
be true where the human mind does not master the world. Whenever – as Marx
pointed out in Capital – the products of man’s hand
grows beyond his intellectual power, which he no longer controls and which
confronts him in the form of commodity production and capital as an independent
social entity, mastering man and even threatening to destroy him, then his
mental activity submits to the mysticism of a supernatural being and he begins
to doubt his ability to distinguish truth from falsehood. Thus, in the course of
many centuries the myth of supernatural deity overshadowed the daily
materialistic experiences of man. Not until society has evolved to a point where
man will be able to comprehend all social forces and will have learned to master
his environment – not until a communist society prevails, in short –
will his ideas be in full accord with the realities of the world. Only after the
nature of social production as a fundamental basis of all life and therefore of
future development has become clear to man, only when the mind – be it
only theoretically at first – actually masters the world, only then will
our thinking be fully correct. And only then will materialism, the science of
society as formulated by Marx, gain permanent mastery and become the only
applicable philosophy. The Marxian theory of society in principle means the
renewal of philosophy.

Marx, however, was not concerned with pure philosophy. “Philosophers
have only interpreted the world differently, but the point is to change
it,” he says in the theses on Feuerbach. The world situation pressed for
practical action. At first inspired by the bourgeois opposition to feudal
absolutism, later strengthened by the new forces that emanated from the struggle
of the English and French proletariat against the bourgeoisie, Marx and Engels,
thanks to their careful study of social realities, arrived at the conclusion
that the proletarian revolution following on the heels of the bourgeois
revolution would bring the real liberation of humanity. Their activity was
devoted to this revolution, and in the Communist Manifesto they
laid down the first directions for the workers’ class struggle.

Marxism has since been inseparably connected with the class struggle of the
proletariat. If we ask what Marxism is, we must first of all understand that it
does not mean everything Marx ever thought and wrote. The views of his earlier
years, for instance, are representative only in part; they are developmental
phases leading toward Marxism. While the role of the proletarian class struggle
and the aim of communism is already outlined in the Communist
Manifesto, the theory of surplus value is developed much later. All of
Marx’s developing ideas are determined by the social relation, the
character of the revolution, the part played by the state. And all these ideas
had a different content in 1848 when the proletariat had only begun to develop
than they had later or have today. Of vital importance, however, are
Marx’s original scientific contributions. There is first of all the theory
of historical materialism, according to which the development of society is
determined by its productive forces that make for a certain mode of production,
especially through the productive force of class struggles. There is the theory
of the determination of all political and ideological phenomena of intellectual
life in general by the productive forces and relations. And there is the
presentation of capitalism as a historical phenomena, the analysis of its
structure by the theory of value and surplus value, and the explanation of
capitalism’s evolutionary tendencies through the proletarian revolution
towards communism. With these theories Marx has enriched the knowledge of
humanity permanently. They constitute the solid fundament of Marxism. From these
premises further conclusions can be derived under new and changed circumstances.
Because of this scientific basis Marxism is a new way of looking at the past and
the future, at the meaning of life, the world and thought; it is a spiritual
revolution, a new view of the world. As a view of life, however, Marxism is real
only through the class that adheres to it. The workers who are imbued with this
new outlook become aware of themselves as the class of the future, growing in
number and strength and consciousness, striving to take production into their
own hands and through the revolution to become masters of their own fate. Thus
Marxism as the theory of the proletarian revolution is a reality, and at the
same time a living power, only in the minds and hearts of the revolutionary
proletariat.

Yet Marxism is not an inflexible doctrine or a sterile dogma. Society
changes, the proletariat grows, science develops. New forms and phenomena arise
in capitalism, in politics, in science, which Marx and Engels could not have
foreseen or surmised. But the method of research which they formed remains to
this day an excellent guide and tool towards the understanding and
interpretation of new events. The proletariat, enormously increased under
capitalism, today stands only at the threshold of its revolution and Marxist
development; Marxism only now begins to play its role as a living power in the
proletariat. Thus Marxism itself is a living theory which grows with the
increase of the proletariat and with the tasks and aims of the class
struggle.

II

To return to the political scene out of which Marxism emerged, it
must be noted that the revolution of 1848 did not yield full political power to
the bourgeoisie. But after 1850 capitalism developed strongly in France and
Germany. In Prussia, the Progressive Party began its fight for a state
constitution, whose inner weakness became evident later when the government, in
the interest of militarism, met the demands of the bourgeoisie for a strong
national state. Movements for national unity dominated the political scene of
Central Europe. Everywhere, with the exception of England, where it already held
power, the rising bourgeoisie struggled against the feudal-absolutistic
conditions.

The struggle of a new class for power in state and society is simultaneously
in its conceptional form always a struggle for a new world view. The old powers
can be defeated only when the masses rise up against them or, at least, do not
obey them any longer. Therefore it was necessary for the bourgeoisie to secure
for itself the adherence of the proletariat to the capitalist society. For this
purpose the old ideas of the peasants and of the petit-bourgeoisie had to be
destroyed and supplanted with new bourgeois ideologies. Capitalism itself
furnished the means to this end.

The natural sciences are the spiritual base of capitalism. On the development
of these sciences depends the technical progress that drives capitalism forward.
Science, therefore, was held in high esteem by the young bourgeois class. At the
same time, this science freed them from the conventional dogmas incorporated in
the rule of feudalism. The conclusion drawn from scientific investigations
stimulated a new outlook on life and the world and supplied the bourgeoisie with
the necessary arguments to defy the old feudal powers. The new world outlook was
disseminated by the bourgeoisie among the masses. To the peasantry and the
petit-bourgeois artisan belongs the inherited biblical faith. But as soon as the
sons of the peasants or proletarianized artisans become industrial workers they
easily accept the ideas of capitalist development; even those who remain in
pre-capitalistic enterprises are lured by the more liberal outlook of the
bourgeoisie.

The intellectual struggle was primarily a struggle against religion. The
religious creed is the ideology of past conditions; it is the inherited
tradition which keeps the masses in submission to the old powers and which had
to be defeated. The struggle against religion was a social necessity. It had to
take on varying forms with varying conditions. In those countries where the
bourgeoisie had already attained full power, as for instance in England, the
struggle was no longer necessary and the bourgeoisie paid homage to the
established church. Only among the lower middle classes and among the workers
did the radical movement find some adherence. But where industry and the
bourgeoisie had to fight for emancipation they proclaimed a liberal, ethical
Christianity in opposition to the orthodox faith. Where the struggle against a
still powerful royal and aristocratic class was difficult and required the
utmost exertion and strength the new world outlook had to assume extreme forms
of radicalism and gave rise to bourgeois materialism. This was so to a large
degree in Central Europe. It is no accident that the most popular propaganda for
materialism (von Moleschot, Vogt, Buechner) originated here. It also found an
echo in other countries as well. In addition to these radical pamphlets a rich
literature of enlightenment and popularization of modern scientific discoveries
appeared, all intended as weapons in the struggle to free the urban masses, the
workers and the peasantry from the spiritual fetters of tradition and to make
them into followers of the progressive bourgeoisie. The bourgeois
intelligentsia, professors, engineers, doctors, etc., were the most zealous
propagandists of the new enlightenment.

The essence of natural science was the discovery of laws operating in nature.
A careful study of natural phenomena disclosed recurring regularities which
allowed for scientific predictions. The 17th century had already known the
Galilean law of falling bodies and the new law of gravity, Kepler’s laws
of the planetary movements, Snell’s law of light refraction and
Boyle’s law of the density of gas. Finally, towards the end of the
century, came the discovery of the law of gravitation by Newton which to a far
greater extent than all preceding discoveries, exerted a tremendous influence on
the philosophical thought of the 18th and 19th centuries. While the others were
rules that were not always absolutely correct, Newton’s law of gravitation
proved to be the first real, universally applicable natural law which made
possible correct measurements of cosmic bodies despite all their irregularities.
From this the conception developed that all natural phenomena follow definite,
fixed laws. In nature causality rules: gravity is the cause of falling bodies,
gravitation causes the movements of planets. All occurring phenomena are effects
totally determined by their causes, allowing for neither free will, accident nor
caprice.

This fixed order of natural science was in direct contrast to the traditional
religious doctrines in which God as a despotic sovereign arbitrarily rules the
world and disposes fortune and misfortune as he sees fit, strikes his enemies
with thunderbolts and pestilence, rewards others with miracles. Miracles are
contradictory to the fixed order of nature; miracles are impossible, and all
reports about them in the Bible are fables. The biblical and religious
interpretations of nature belong to an epoch in which a primitive agricultural
mode of production prevailed under the overlordship of an absolute despot. The
natural philosophy of the rising bourgeoisie with its natural laws controlling
all phenomena belongs to a new order of state and society where the arbitrary
rule of the despot is replaced by laws valid for all.

The natural philosophy of the Bible which asserts theology to be absolute,
divine truth is the natural philosophy of ignorance that has been deceived by
outward appearances, that saw the immovable earth as the center of the universe
and held that all created matter was also perishable. Scientific experiment
showed, on the contrary, that matter which apparently disappeared (as for
instance in burning) actually changes into gaseous, invisible forms. Scales
demonstrated that a reduction in the total weight did not occur in this process
and that therefore no matter disappeared. This discovery was generalized into a
new principle: matter cannot be destroyed, its quantity always remains constant,
only its form and combinations undergo a change. This holds good for each
chemical element; its atoms constitute the immutable building stones of all
bodies. Thus natural science with its theory of the conservation of matter, of
the eternity of nature, opposed the theological dogma of the creation of the
world 6000 years ago.

Matter is not the only substance science found to be imperishable. Since the
middle of the 19th century, the law known as the conservation of energy came to
be regarded as the fundamental axiom of modern physics. Here, too, a fixed and
far reaching order of nature was observed; in all occurences changes of the form
of energy take place: heat and motion, tension and attraction, electrical
energy; but the total quantity never changes. This principle led to an
understanding of the development of cosmic bodies, the sun and the earth, in the
light of which all the assertions of theology appeared like the talk of a
stuttering child.

Of even greater consequence were the scientific discoveries concerning
man’s position in the world. The Darwinian theory of the origin of
species, which showed the evolution of man from the animal kingdom, was in
complete contradiction to all religious doctrines. But even before Darwin,
discoveries in biology and chemistry revealed the organic identity of all human
and living creatures with non-organic nature. The protoplasm, the albuminous
substance of which the cells of all living beings are composed and on which all
life is dependent, consists of the same atoms as all other matter. The human
intellect, which was elevated by the theological doctrine of the immortal soul
to divinity, is closely bound up with the physical properties of the brain; all
spiritual phenomena are the accompaniment to or effect of material occurrences
in the brain cells.

Bourgeois materialism drew the most radical conclusions from these scientific
discoveries. Everything spiritual is merely the product of material processes;
ideas are the secretion of the brain, just as bile is the secretion of the
liver. Let religion – said Buchner – go on talking about the
perishability of matter and the immortality of the mind; in reality it is the
other way around. With the least change in or injury to the brain everything
spiritual disappears, nothing at all remains of the spirit when the brain is
destroyed, while matter, of which it is composed, is eternal and indestructible.
All living phenomena, including human ideas, have their origin in the chemical
and physical processes of the cellular substance; they differ from non-living
matter only in their greater complexity. Ultimately, one must go back to the
dynamics and movements of atoms, that is, explain everything on the basis of
atoms.

Having reached these conclusions, natural materialism was of course no longer
able to maintain itself. After all, ideas are different from bile and similar
bodily secretions; mind cannot simply be put into the same category with force
or energy. If mind is the product of the brain, which differs only in degree
from other tissues and cells, then, it must be concluded, something of a mind
must – as a matter of principle – also be found in every animal
cell. And because the cellular substance is only an aggregate of atoms, more
complex but fundamentally not different from other matter, the conclusion must
be that something of that which we call mind is already present in the atom: in
every minute particle of matter there must be a trace of the spiritual
substance. This theory of the “atom-soul” we find in the works of
Ernst Haeckel, energetic propagandist of Darwin and courageous combatter of
religious dogmatism, who was hated and despised by his reactionary
contemporaries. Haeckel no longer considered his philosophical view as
materialism but called it monism – strangely enough, for his philosophy
sees the dual existence of mind and matter in even the smallest elements of the
world.

Materialism dominated the ideology of the bourgeois class for only a very
short time. Only so long as the bourgeoisie could believe that its society with
its private property rights, its personal liberty, and free competition, through
the development of industry, science and technique, could solve the life
problems of every citizen – only that long could the bourgeoisie assume
that its theoretical problems could be solved by the natural sciences without
the need to resort to any supernatural and spiritual powers. As soon, however,
as it became evident that capitalism could not solve the life problems of the
masses, as was shown by the sharpening of the proletarian class struggles, the
confident materialist philosophy disappeared. The world was again full of
insoluble contradictions and uncertainties, of sinister forces threatening
social stability. The bourgeoisie resorted once more to all kinds of religious
creeds and superstitions. Bourgeois intellectuals and natural scientists
submitted to the influence of mystical tendencies. They were quick to discover
the various weaknesses and shortcomings of the materialist philosophy and made
speeches about the “limitations of natural science” and the
insoluble “mystery of life".

Only a small minority of the more radical members of the lower middle class
still clung to the old political solutions of early capitalism and continued to
hold natural scientific materialism in respect. Among the rising working class
too, materialism found a fertile ground. The anarchists have long been its most
convinced followers. Social-democratic workers received the interpretation of
Marxism and the conclusions of natural materialism with equal interest.
Capitalistic practices, daily experiences and theoretical discourses on the
nature of society contributed greatly towards undermining traditional religion.
The need for scientific enlightenment grew and the workers became the most
zealous readers of the works of Buechner and Haeckel. While Marxist doctrine
determined the practical, political and social ideology of the workers, a wider
understanding asserted itself only gradually; few became aware of the fact that
bourgeois materialism had long since been outdated and surpassed by historical
materialism. This, by the way, accords with the fact that the working class
movement had not reached a position enabling it to destroy capitalism, but that
its class struggle only served to secure a better place for it within the
capitalist society. Thus, the democratic solutions offered by the early
bourgeois movement were still considered valid for the working class also. The
full comprehension of revolutionary Marxist theory is possible only in
connection with revolutionary practice.

Wherein lies the contradiction between bourgeois materialism and historical
materialism?

Both concepts agree in so far as they are materialist philosophies, that is,
both recognize the reality of nature, and the primacy of the external world;
both recognize that spiritual phenomena, sensation, consciousness and ideas, are
derived from the former. Their opposition rests on this: bourgeois materialism
bases itself on natural science, historical materialism is primarily the science
of society. Bourgeois natural scientists observe man only as an object of nature
– the highest of the animals –, determined by natural laws. For an
explanation of man’s life and action they employ general biological laws
and, in a wider sense, the laws of chemistry, physics and mechanics. With these
means little can be accomplished in the way of understanding social phenomena
and ideas. Historical materialism, on the other hand, lays bare the specific
evolutionary laws of human society and shows the interconnection between ideas
and society.

The axiom of materialism, that the mental is determined by the material
world, has therefore entirely different meanings for the two doctrines. For
bourgeois materialism it means that ideas are products of the brain, of the
structure and composition of the brain substance, in the last instance, of the
dynamics of the atoms of the brain. For historical materialism it means that the
ideas of man are determined by his social environment. Society is his
environment which acts upon him through his sense organs. This postulates an
entirely different approach to the problem and a different direction of thought;
consequently, also a different theory of knowledge. For bourgeois materialism
the question of the meaning of knowledge is a question of the relationship of
spiritual phenomena to the physico-chemical-biological phenomena in the brain
matter. For historical materialism it is a question of the relationship of the
ideas in our mind to the phenomena which we view as the external world.

However, man’s position in society is not purely that of an observing
being but that of a dynamic force which reacts on his environment and changes
it. Society is nature transformed through labor. To the natural scientist nature
is the objectively given reality which he observes and which acts on him through
the medium of his senses. To him the external world is the active and dynamic
element, while the mind is the receptive element. Thus it is emphasized that the
mind is only a reflection, an image of the external world, as Engels expressed
it when he pointed out the contradiction between the materialist and idealist
philosophies. But the science of the naturalist is only a part of the whole of
human activity, only a means to a much greater end. It is the preceding, passive
part of his activity which is followed by the active part: the technical
elaboration, production and transformation of the world by man.

Man is in the first place an active being. In the labor process he utilizes
his organs and aptitudes in order to constantly build and remake his
environment.

For this reason he not only invented the artificial organs we call tools, but
also trained his physical and mental aptitudes so that they might serve him as
effective aids in the preservation of his life and in reacting effectively to
his natural environment. His main organ is the brain whose task, thinking, is as
good a physical activity as any other. The most important product of thought
activity, the effective action of the mind upon the world, is science which, as
a mental instrument, stands next to the material instruments and, itself a
productive power, constitutes, as the basis of technology, an essential part of
the productive apparatus.

Historical materialism sees the results of science, concepts, substances,
natural laws and forces, although formed by nature, as first of all the products
of the mental work of humanity. Bourgeois materialism, on the other hand, from
the point of view of natural science sees all this as belonging to nature which
has been discovered and brought to light only by science. Natural scientists
consider the immutable substances, matter, energy, electricity, gravity, ether,
the law of gravitation, the law of entropy, etc., as the basic elements of the
world itself, as reality, that which has to he discovered. From the viewpoint of
historical materialism, however, these are products which creative mental
activity forms out of the substance of natural phenomena.

Another difference lies in the dialectic which historical materialism
inherited from Hegel. Engels has pointed out that the materialist philosophy of
the 18th century disregarded evolution; yet evolution makes dialectical thinking
indispensable. Historical materialism and dialectics have since become
synonymous. It is assumed that the dialectical character of historical
materialism is best described when it is referred to as the theory of
development. However, the process of evolution was also known to the natural
science of the 19th century. Scientists were well acquainted with the growth of
the cell into a complex organism, the evolution of animal species as expressed
in the origin of species, and the theory of the evolution of the physical world
known as the law of entropy. But their method of reasoning was undialectical.
They believed their concepts were concrete objects and considered their
identities and opposites as absolutes. Consequently, the evolution of the
universe as well as the continued progress of knowledge brought out
contradictions in the theory of knowledge of which many examples have been
quoted by Engels in his “Anti-Dühring.”
Understanding in general and science in particular segregate and systemize
into definite concepts and laws what in the real world of phenomena occurs in
continuous flux and transition. By means of names, through which language
separates and defines the sequel of events, all occurrences falling into a
particular group are considered similar and unchangeable. As abstract concepts
they differ sharply, but in reality they converge and fuze. The colors blue and
green are distinct from each other but in the intermediary nuances no one can
say definitely where one color ends and the other begins. It cannot be stated at
which point during its life cycle a flower begins or ceases to be a flower. That
in practical life good and evil are not absolute opposites and that the greatest
justice may become the greatest injustice is acknowledged everyday, just as
juridical freedom may be transformed into its opposite. Dialectical thinking
corresponds to reality inasmuch as it takes into consideration that the finite
cannot explain the infinite, nor the static the dynamic world; that every
concept has to develop into new concepts, or even into its opposite.
Metaphysical thinking, on the other hand, leads to dogmatic assertions and
contradictions because it views conceptions as fixed entities. Metaphysical,
that is undialectical, thinking considers concepts formulated by thought as
independent concepts that make up the reality of the world. Natural science
proper does not suffer much from this shortcoming. It surmounts difficulties and
contradictions in practice insofar as the very process of development compels it
to continually revise its formulations and concepts, to amplify them by breaking
them up in greater detail, to further modify its formulations to account for the
new changes and to find new formulas for additions and corrections, thereby
bringing the picture ever closer to the original model, the phenomenal world.
The lack in dialectic reasoning becomes disturbing only when the naturalist
passes from his special field of knowledge towards general philosophy and
theory, as is the case with bourgeois materialism.

Thus, for instance, the theory of the origin of species very often led to the
notion that the human mind, having evolved from the animal mentality, is
qualitatively identical with the latter and differs from it only quantitatively.
On the other hand, the actually-experienced qualitative difference between the
human and the animal mind was raised by theological doctrine, in preaching
immortality of the soul, to the level of an absolute antithesis. In both cases
there is no dialectical thinking according to which substances of similar origin
and property become differentiated in the process of growth and acquire new
properties commanding new definitions and exhibiting entirely new
characteristics, though the original property does not completely disappear, nor
are they transformed into the complete antithesis of the original pattern.

It is metaphysical and non-dialectical to identify thought because it is the
product of brain processes with the products of other organs, or to assume that
mind, because it is a quality of material substance, is a characteristic quality
of all matter. It is also false to think that because mind is something other
than matter, it must absolutely and totally differ from it, that there is no
transition to and connection with both so that a dualism of mind and matter,
reaching down to the atoms, remains sharp and unbridgeable. From the standpoint
of dialectics, mind incorporates all those phenomena we call mental which,
however, cannot be carried beyond their actual existence in the lowest living
animals. There the term mind becomes questionable, because the spiritual
phenomena disappear gradually into mere sense perception, into the simple forms
of life. The characteristic quality “spirit,” which is or is not
there, does not exist in nature; spirit is just a name we attach to a number of
definite phenomena, some of which we understand clearly, others only partly.

Here life itself offers a close analogy. Proceeding from the smallest
microscopic organism to still smaller invisible bacteria, we finally come to
very complicated albumnious molecules that fall within the sphere of chemistry.
Where living matter ceases to exist and dead matter begins cannot be determined;
phenomena change gradually, become simplified, are still analogous and are yet
already different. This does not mean that we are unable to ascertain
demarcation lines; it is simply a fact that nature knows no borders. The
phenomenon life, which is or is not, does not exist in nature; again life is
merely a name, a concept we form in order to comprehend the many different
aspects of reality. Because bourgeois materialism deals with life, death, and
mind as if they were independent realities it is compelled to work with
insurmountable opposites, whereas nature consists of uncountable transitional
processes.

The difference between bourgeois and historical materialism reaches down to
basic philosophical views. Bourgeois materialism, in contradistinction to the
comprehensive and completely realistic historical materialism, is illusionary
and incomplete, just as the bourgeois class movement whose theory was bourgeois
materialism, represented a limited and illusionary emancipation in contrast to
complete and real liberation by way of the proletarian class struggle. The
difference between the two concepts shows itself practically in their position
towards religion. Bourgeois materialism intended to overcome religion. However,
a particular view cannot be ended by mere argumentation; each argument finds a
counter-argument. Only when it is shown why, and under what conditions a certain
view was necessary can this view be defeated. It must be shown that its basis
was merely historical. Thus the struggle of natural science against religion had
sense only insofar as primitive religious beliefs were concerned, as for
instance, the breaking down of ignorance and superstition towards such natural
phenomena as thunder and lightning. The theory of bourgeois society could
destroy the theories of primitive agricultural economy. But religion in
bourgeois society is anchored in its unknown and uncontrollable social forces.
Bourgeois materialism is unable to deal with these forces. Historical
materialism, on the other hand, explains and shows why religion was for certain
times and classes a necessary and indispensable way of thought. It lays bare the
social basis of religion. Only thus may its power be broken. Historical
materialism does not struggle directly against religion; from its higher
position it understands and explains religion as a natural phenomenon within
definite social forms. It weakens religious thinking through this insight, and
is able to predict that, with the formation of a new society, religion will
disappear. In the same way historical materialism, too, explains the temporary
appearance of materialism within bourgeois society, as well as the retrogression
of this bourgeois class into mysticism and religious trends. These trends, to be
sure, do not disturb the bourgeois aptitude for thinking in terms of sharp
opposites, but they replace the former atmosphere of hope and assurance with a
skepticism and pessimism that speaks of the insolvability of world problems.
Historical materialism also explains its own growth among the working class as
being due not to its anti-religious arguments, but to the developing recognition
of the real powers in society. Thus the influence of religion is weakened and
will disappear with the proletarian revolution, the theoretical expression of
which is historical materialism.

J. Harper

Notes


1. This formula did not prove – as
Engels believed – the validity of materialism as against Kant’s
“Thing in itself.” The “Thing in itself” results from
the incapacity of bourgeois philosophy to explain the earthly origin of moral
law. The “Thing in itself” has thus not been contradicted and proven
false by the chemical industry but by historical materialism. It was the latter
that enabled Engels to see the fallacy in the “Thing in itself,”
although he offered other arguments.


     From : Marxists.org

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     Materialism And Historical Materialism -- Updated : January 08, 2022

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