The place of Marxism in history. Ernest Mandel (Montreuil, France: Notebooks for Study and Research 1986)
Over the years there have appeared many brief presentations of Marxism. The appearance of Ernest Mandel's The Place of Marxism in History is an event of considerable importance, however, because in many ways it surpasses all such works that have appeared in recent decades. It invites comparison with the best educational works by, Engels, Mehring, Plekhanov, Riazanov, Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky.
For years Ernest Mandel has been engaged in developing creative and widely respected works of Marxist scholarship. Yet unlike many 'academic Marxists' he has also been engaged in years of revolutionary socialist activity—in the effort to utilise Marxism for the purpose of helping to educate and mobilise workers, students, and others so that they might change the world. The result of this dual engagement is an approach to Marxism which is superior to that which is commonly found, one which is truer to the spirit, the method, and the ideas of scientific socialism's founders.
'To understand Marxism', he writes, 'we must first set it in its historical context. We must understand when it was born and how it arose. We must explain its emergence and development by the interaction of social forces: their economic nature, their material interests, their ideology, the people who formulated their aspirations. In other words, we must apply the materialist conception of history to Marxism itself: not to consider its appearance as a matter of course, but to understand that it requires an explanation, and try to enable us to outline more precisely its content and historical importance.'
In the first section of this study, Mandel offers a masterful sketch of the general historical context out of which Marxism emerged, spanning the period in which class society first arose down to the epoch of capitalism's industrial revolution, which also saw the ferment of democratic and working class struggles and the flourishing of scientific and radical social thought. The efforts of Marx and Engels within this context, we are told in the second section on fundamental characteristics of Marxism, resulted in 'a quadruple synthesis: a synthesis of the main social sciences; a synthesis between these and the main social project of emancipating humanity; a synthesis between the project of human emancipation and the real self-organisation and self-emancipation movement of the modern proletariat; and a synthesis between the real workers movement and a revolutionary political organisation and action.'
The third and longest section deals with Marxism's transformation of the social sciences. Describing Marx's transformation of classical German philiosophy, Mandel offers one of the best (most clear and genuinely dialectic) brief discussions of dialectical materialism one can find. Discussing the transformation of French sociological historiography, he provides a insightful description of historical materialism. Perhaps the most difficult (and least successful) part of this section—which attempts to outline a number of complicated concepts—deals with the transformation of the English political economy that resulted in Marx's analysis of capitalism's economic dynamics. In each case, Mandel indicates first the advances and insights of thinkers who preceded Marx, then points to problems which cropped up in their analyses, and finally focuses on the breakthroughs achieved by Marx and Engels in each realm. This method highlights the continuities of the two revolutionaries with previous social scientists, both dispelling the illusion that they were intellectual 'supermen' and illuminating their actual accomplishments. The reader is consequently provided with an understanding of the genuinely scientific character of their thought.
Mandel employs this fruitful methodology in the next two sections on the supercession of utopian socialism and on the proletarian transformation of revolutionary activity and organisation. This is followed by an important section entitled, "The fusion of the real workers movement and scientific socialism," which gives a sense of the labour movement during the time of Marx and Engels, again indicating strengths, then weaknesses. Mandel writes: "Marx and Engels undertook a gigantic effort, for over half a century, to overcome these weaknesses. In the end, they were basically successful in at least a large number of countries (all the industrialised countries of the late 19th century except the United States). Their efforts can be described as a gradual, progressive fusion of the real movement of the proletariat towards independent action and organisation, with the main achievements of scientific socialism accessible to the broad masses (not with all aspects of the Marxist doctrine)." This summary version of Marxism, he notes in a later section, "boiled down to a few central ideas: the class struggle; the socialist goal of that struggle, through collective ownership of the major means of production and exchange; the conquest of political power to achieve that goal; international solidarity of the workers." Even such simplified Marxism represented a substantial advance for the labour movement, Mandel points out, yet it also contained limitations which—where not overcome—contributed to the disorientation of the working class by the early 20th century.
In his final section on the worldwide spread of Marxism after the deaths of Marx and Engels, Mandel specifically identifies Luxemburg, Lenin, and Trotsky as those who—fully grounded in the revolutionary doctrines and method of scientific socialism—provided the breakthroughs capable of overcoming the crisis of simplified "official Marxism". In fact, the revolutionary Marxist orientation represented by these three figures shapes Mandels's interpretation throughout The Place of Marxism in History. Thus one comes away with a heightened sense of the continuity between the specific perspectives of Marx and Engels and the later Leninist-Trotskyist understanding of the world we live in and how it is to be transformed. While this may be disconcerting for those who don't subscribe to that understanding, Mandel's interpretations are both vivid and persuasive.
There are other strengths in this study. One is a greater attention by Mandel than previously to the influence of revolutionary feminist thought on the outlook of Marx and Engels. Another is an unambiguous internationalism which is reflected in his references to developments, struggles, and intellectual currents in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. He also deals with the common charge that Marxism is simply a European or "Eurocentrist" ideology, in a passage worth quoting at length:
Marxism is, of course, a product of the maturation of the contradictions of bourgeois society which undeniably appeared first in Europe. In this sense, it could not be developed in Asia, the Americas or Africa which experienced only a rudimentary form of capitalist development during most of the 19th century.
But although Marxism was born in Europe, it had from the outset an international, and even worldwide, dimension which made it dependent on everything that happened on all the other continents. The violent, disruptive, destructive and inhuman impact of capitalism on pre-capitalist societies in the Americas, Asia and Africa was far worse than ts impact on pre-capitalist society in Western, Southern, Central and Eastern Europe. Marx and Engels were too rigorous scientists and too passionate humanists not to notice this, to be indignant about it and to revolt against these abominable crimes.
As a result, the perception of the "Third World", of its degradation and inevitable revolt, was quickly integrated into their writings, after occupying only a small place in the writings of their youth. It is enough to recall their resolute support for the Indian Sepoys and the Chinese Tai-pings, and for the emancipation of the American slaves, to reject the accusation of Euro-centrism. In the same vein, they branded the joint French, Spanish and British expedition against Mexico as "one of the most monstrous undertakings in the annals of international history" (23/11/1861, MEW, Vol 15, p. 366). Their steadily more advanced investigation of the "Asian mode of production", of ethnology, of the particularities of non-European civilisations and societies, of the Russian village community (mir), occupied a growing place in the intellectual work of Marx and Engels in the last two decades of their life, and left a more and more marked imprint on their writings—including Capital.
The study also includes useful chronological tables, a valuable glossary, and an interesting reading list. The Place of Marxism in History, (perhaps along with the three-volume Marx and Engels Selected Works and David Riazanov's dual biography Karl Marx and Frederick Engels) can help provide a solid grounding in the method and doctrines of scientific socialism for serious minded revolutionaries. It deserves widespread distribution and use.
(Paul Le Blanc)