UNCOVERING THE UNDERCOVER

The place of Marxism in History:

Earnest Mandel; Humanities press international, Inc., 165 First Avenue, Atlantic Highland, New Jersey 07716. Rs. Not mentioned.

Book review; Kashif Raza Sabri

Generally, people skip the historical context while understanding Marxism. Study of emergence and development of Marxism should be given priority. THE PLACE OF MARXISM IN HISTORY deals with the historical context of Marxism. As the author is of view that we should explain its emergence and development by the interaction of social forces, he has done so in this book at his best. With the advent of industrial revolution in the second half of the eighteenth century capitalist mode of production was consolidated. Shortcomings of feudalism and spread of rationalism led to the great bourgeois revolutions of eighteenth century which paved the way for progress of capitalism. But, along with the expansion of knowledge, wealth, and human rights capitalism also carried deprivation, injustices, oppressions and denials of human rights. Due to the polarization of society, between rich and poor, new awareness among workers and craftsmen pushed a new practice: class struggle. Karl Marx and Engels assumed the German philosophy; Hegels dialectic, as their own, after transforming it. However, the origin of dialectics is quiet ancient. Greek philosopher Heraclitus said every thing changes and moves. It was later developed by Chinese thinkers and judo-Dutch philosopher Spinoza. Hegel conceived dialectics essentially in the realm of ideas. He often identified the real with the ideal. He reduced the dialectics of History to the dialectics of the absolute idea. Hegels famous formula-all that is real is rational; all that is rational is real, which means all that is real survives because its reality corresponds to a necessity and its own rationality. When its rationality declines, contradictions sharpen and eventually reality begins to disappear, it makes way for a new more rational reality. Interestingly this thought of Hegel is of his younger age. Marx made this very thought as his source and left the works old Hegel which is to some extent reverses of that. According to old Hegel, all reality is rational and necessary otherwise it would not exist. All that is rational and necessary has already been realized. What has not been realized is neither rational nor necessary; otherwise it would already have been realized. It is noteworthy that old Hegelians supported monarchy, religion and the state while young Hegelians were radical, anti-establishment, rebellion and atheistic. Marx and Engels transformed the idealist dialectics into materialist dialectics. According to them material reality exists independently of the desires, passions, intention, and ideas of those who transform it. For Marx and Engels, conquest of spiritual freedom is not in the first place but a progressive conquest of greater material space for life, for freedom, for the possibility of enjoying life. Spiritual, aesthetic and other such pleasures undoubtedly occupy an important place. But the precondition for their satisfaction is the prior satisfaction of the elementary needs for food, shelter, health, sexuality, education, material access to culture and so on.

Further, the materialist dialectics of Marx and Engels got fused with the French sociological historiography and English political economy-the centrality of social labor in human existence. Hence after, they developed their theory of social evolution of humanity in a coherent fashion. Thus the theory of historical materialism or the materialist interpretation of history emerged. The experience of the great bourgeois revolutions of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the lessons that were drawn from them and periodically surfaced in ongoing political debates, provided the impetus that led early nineteenth century French historiography to create the concept of social class and conflicts between social classes, that is, class struggle, as instrument for the understanding of history. The concepts were applied successively by Francois Quesnay, Augustine Thierry and others. Marx and Engels critical appropriation of French sociological historiography led them to link the concept of social class and class struggle to the concept of social labor and social product. Therefore they had to embrace the fundamental thesis of classical English school of political economy: exchange is based on equivalence (the comparison) of the quantities of labor contained in commodities. Importantly, this theory known as the labor theory of value had already been formulated in the middle ages by scholastics and Islamic theoreticians (Thomas Aquinas, ibne khuldun). It was refined in the seventeenth century by William Petty and got final form in the eighteenth century in the works of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Marx and Engels while fusing it with their own theory, sought to resolve various fundamental contradictions and riddles of English political economy to which Smith and Ricardo had found no solution. The book deals with the whole process of modifying and fusing of French historiography as well as English political economy with Marxism. Ahead, the book have a chapter The Supersession of utopian Socialism which defends the classless society and argues that class-divided society has been challenged repeatedly for at least five thousand years not merely by ideologues but also by exploited and oppressed ones. These range from the first strike and peasant revolt of pharaoniz Egypt to the slave revolts of ancient Greece and Rome. The author has quoted many ancient, middle, and modern age revolts or revolution as the challenge for class-divided society. According to him protests and revolts gave way to systematic proposal and models for the reorganization of society based on collective property. The Republic of Plato can be considered the ancestor of all these models. However, Thomas More of England is the first who gave prototype of the utopias in 1535. In seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, various thinkers got inspired by that first utopia and advocated that thought through their works. However, properly speaking, utopian socialist appeared with a combination of descriptions of new society with a practical struggle for its realization in eighteenth century. They include C H Saint-Simon, Robert Owen and others. It is clear that utopian socialists

remained detached from the social and economic realities. However Marx and Engels owed them as they learned many things from them and developed many of their ideas. There is a sufficient discussion on how Marx and Engels made away the flaws of utopian socialism and created their scientific socialism. Along with the transformation of utopian socialism into scientific socialism there had been evolution revolutionary activities and organizations. The two great eighteenth century revolutions had produced a petty bourgeois as well as pre-proletarians. Their agitation led to the creation of many organizations by different people. In England some known wereLondon Corresponding Society led by Thomas Hardy, United Irishmen led by Wolfe Tone. French Gracchus Babeuf formed Conspiracy of Equals. Augustine Banguis Paris Commune (1871) had greatly influenced Marx. Importantly, Blanquist current eventually got fused with the Marxist waves during the 1880s and 1890s, as part of the process of creating a mass socialist workers party in France. Influenced by Blanquist early movement (society of seasons), followers of German Wilhelm weiting has formed league of the outcast in Paris, in 1834, which later emerged as league of the just? Importantly, this very league of just was renamed communist league in 1847, at the time that Marx and Engels formally joined it. Thus revolutionary Banquist, Babouvist and German organizations represented an indispensable link in the chain that led from the bourgeois revolutions of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the revolutionary proletarian action of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the end the author has very sufficiently and exhaustively elaborated the fusion of real workers movement and scientific socialism in the second half of the eighteenth century. He has discussed various worker movements across the Europe and the policies of bourgeois government to curb them, chronologically. Importantly there is also focus on the consistency and continuity of struggles of worker movements against the suppressive attitude of governments. Though there were different movements in different parts of Europe and having great diversities, however they shared certain common features that made them the true initiators of the modern labor movement. Since the movements were born before Marx and Engels, they projected it scientifically or fused with their scientific socialism. The book consists of 79 pages. It is good enough for political science students as well as general readers. To have a broader clarity of the historical context of Marxism one should read it, at least, once.