Reviews and Views
Volume One
Nasser Paydar
Everyone became my friend out of their own suspicion!
Throughout the twentieth century, many movements, tendencies, parties, groups, or individuals protesting against certain corners of capitalist barbarity have somehow attached themselves to Marx! In our society, too, parts of the bourgeois left, and social reformist tendencies are still involved in the name and tradition of Marx in their efforts to achieve their capitalist dreams and expectations! Although with the collapse of the Soviet camp, a large number of former Russian leftists have changed their citizenship from Eastern to Western, the capitalist interpretation of Marx’s teachings is not a closed file in the history of class struggle. The collapse of the Soviet camp and the annexation of representatives of the state pole of capital to Western neoliberal partners have not and will not put an end to the continuation of the bourgeois enterprise in the name of Marx and the banner of the proletariat’s struggle. Moreover, it is not only the chest-slitting lovers of “national industry” who have stolen the banner of Marxian communism to carry the unauthorized cargo of “free capitalist development.” Liberal and democratic critics of the Soviet camp in the West have also, over the years, used Marx’s name to build their own bourgeois socialist utopias. Here too, Marx, the standard-bearer of the movement for the abolition of wage labour, Marx of the “Communist Manifesto,” “The German Ideology,” “Capital,” and “Critique of the Gotha Program,” has been reconstructed and painted in the guise of a democratic Marx loyal to the principles of liberalism!
In the current era of the rise of reactionary reform solutions, the leftist opposition within the Iranian bourgeoisie is showing great enthusiasm for bringing this kind of Marx, “democratic Marx”! and the support of liberal principles! into the political space of Iranian society. Many of these circles and individuals are firmly of the opinion that they are doing their work out of goodwill, a sense of responsibility, and especially out of defence of Marx and his teachings! They are also clinging to the same beliefs and ideas that their European peers or teachers cling to. They have been critical of the dictatorship and oppression of the ruling class in the former Soviet bloc, or at least they are critical today, but neither they nor now nor ever have they sought the root of this dictatorship in the relationship between labour and capital and the dominance of the capitalist mode of production over the bloc countries or anywhere else. Instead of seeing wage labour relations as the basis and institution of the dictatorship of the so-called “socialist” societies, they have considered this dictatorship to be the product of the evil nature of the “revisionist communists”. They have also assumed that the problem of the proletariat of these societies is not capitalist exploitation and the brutal domination of capitalism, but dictatorial rule in a socialist society. Meanwhile, the groups that have wanted to remain loyal to their previous school beliefs here and there have found the only solution in taking an oath of allegiance to democracy and trying to absolve themselves, or Marx and the “Marxists”, of being dictators!
The article by Maximilian Rublev, a French philosopher and “Marxist”, entitled “Marx and Democracy”, is also one of the articles that attempts to introduce Marx to the workers of the world from this perspective as a hard-working defender of Western democracy and as a person whose communism is a manifestation of his burning love for democracy. The Iranian worker who has read or is reading the Persian translation of this article should ponder the relationship between Maximilian Rubel’s account of Marx’s teachings and the Marxist reality of these teachings themselves with class insight. The aim of the present article is to help with this contemplation and to uncover the multitude of distortions that this French philosopher and “Marxist” has made in some of Marx’s teachings. With this explanation, we turn to Rubel’s article.
Marx and Democracy
Throughout his article, Rublev makes all sorts of inquiries into the process of the development of Marx’s ideas. But the only thing he seriously avoids is examining Marx’s view of the socialist movement of the working class and his explanation of communism as the solution and platform for the ongoing struggle of the proletariat against capitalist relations. Rublev is a restless loser of democracy and in all the fields, mountains, and villages of Marx’s teachings, he sees the provocative image of democracy everywhere! His words in the article “Marx and Democracy” revolve around an important axis: that “communism is only a phase of the development and deepening of democracy”! I will also examine the same main thrust of his argument throughout this short article. But before that, I find it necessary to cite a summary of the entire article here. In doing so, I will try to give those readers of “Negah” who have not read Rublev’s writing a more or less clear picture of the framework of his words. Rublev says:
“The essence of Karl Marx’s works is social criticism. These criticisms take the state and money as their main targets. Marx’s works begin this criticism before joining the labour movement. In this sense, in order to reach communism, he first needed to achieve the theoretical proof of the incompatibility of the state and money with human freedom. It is only then that democracy, as the secret of liberation based on profoundly transformed social relations, attracts his attention and the achievement of that perfection becomes his desired goal.
Marx undertook extensive studies of capital between the two stages of his life. There has been much discussion about his economic works, but there has been no discussion about his handwritten pamphlet in Kreuznach. In this work, Marx, while breaking away from Hegel, combines A concept of democracy is achieved which is much more valid than his previous understanding. It is wrong to say that by becoming a communist Marx abandoned the idealism and liberalism expressed in his earlier polemical treatises. Marx’s understanding of democracy after his break with Hegel is that democracy exists only in a society in which men, in their free association through the medium of politics and economics, are not alienated from their own personalities.”
Rublev then examines the course of Marx’s thought from democracy to communism and writes:
“During his stay in Berlin, Marx spent a lot of time studying Spinoza’s works and in one of his study notebooks, he noted at least one hundred and sixty sentences from this philosopher’s Theological Political Treatise. In these notes, Marx himself emphasizes the belief that he learned worldview and human relations from Spinoza. Spinoza’s thought determined Marx to call Germany to democracy. Marx learned the reconciliation of necessity and freedom from Spinoza. After freeing himself from Hegelianism, he endeavoured to merge Spinoza’s democracy with communism. Marx concluded from his study of Spinoza that Democracy arises from the unity of men who, as a society constituted by them, enjoy the right of sovereignty over all that is within their power. Of all forms of government, democracy is the most natural and the least despotic in respect for individual freedom; for in it no one is absolutely deprived of his natural rights. Democracy is the solved riddle of all constitutions. Here the constitution returns continuously to its real foundation, to real man, to real people. The constitution is not only in itself, according to its essence, but also by virtue of its existence, by virtue of reality, as the special achievements of the people. The constitution, as it is, appears as a free human product.”
Rubel continues:
“Marx’s deep attachment to democracy can be clearly seen in all areas of his political and social expression or approach. I have a pamphlet of his with notes from a Scotsman’s report on the United States in 1830, which reflects his special sensitivity to the phenomenon of democracy and civil rights in America. Marx reads Tocqueville’s report on this subject and then examines the writings of Thomas Hamilton, who had deeper conclusions than Tocqueville. In this regard, he notes 50 sentences from this writing, which relate to federalism and general elections, the legal and real status of citizens, and the difference in interests between the North and the South. Tocqueville had previously praised American democracy, but he was afraid of its consequences. At the same time, he looked at the social and economic prospects of the regimes of the Democratic Party has shown optimism. Hamilton, on the contrary, focuses on the prospect of class struggle in America and believes that in America the lack of foresight of democracy will not be compensated by the foresight and foresight of the aristocracy. There is a conscious minority in New York who are aware of their class interests. They point to education and say that when education is for the benefit of a certain class, then democracy, which means absolute equality, does not exist. They expose the terrible injustice that exists. Hamilton then predicts industrial progress and further development of America. At the same time, he expresses the certainty that the sufferers will not tolerate the existing injustice.”
After quoting these materials, Rublev adds:
“Our attempt was to say that Marx is the spiritual heir of Tocqueville and Hamilton in the new science of society. He has replaced the dialectic of historical necessity with faith in divine providence. Marx has only replaced the words anarchy and usurpation with the word communism in the writings of Tocqueville and Hamilton. In Marx’s political development, there is a deep connection between democratic beliefs and joining communism.”
Rublev continues his discoveries about Marx’s deep attachment to democracy: “Another proof is that in 1850, seven years after he became a communist, when he was the leader of the Communist League, Marx allowed the member of the League, Hermann Becker, to publish a selection of his works. At the forefront of these works are his liberal and democratic writings in the newspaper “Rheinische Zeitung”. Marx believed that his first democratic ideas contained all the elements of humanism, of which communism is only a special aspect. Democracy and communism, in Marx’s version, explain the dual components of one movement, namely political revolution and social revolution. Marx distinguishes political and social revolution, but what is important is that he plays both roles simultaneously everywhere. “He is an activist in democratic movements, while also being an activist in the communist movement.”
These are the results of Rublev’s article on Marx and Democracy. With this brief remark, we begin our examination of his writing. The first part of the article seeks to prove the theory that communism is nothing more than a stage in the development of democracy or the most complete phase of its development and unfolding!! To be more precise, democracy forms the solid foundation of socialism! To prove this claim, Rublev tries to use the process of transition of Marx’s thought from liberalism and democracy to communism. In this regard, he commits several very fundamental and profound errors. First, the existence and non-existence or the nature of the relationship between important social phenomena cannot be investigated by referring to the links between these phenomena in the intellectual or political life of this or that person. That this particular person is Marx and these specific social phenomena are democracy and communism certainly does not change the essence of the problem. Such an analysis or approach is alien to the materialist understanding. It has no scientific validity and bears no trace of Marxist methodology. Secondly, the author of “Marx and Democracy’s citation of Marx’s thought and life as evidence for the claim in this regard is also very unrealistic and caricatured. Each of these two issues in turn requires discussion and investigation.
If Marx went from earth to heaven, Maximilian Rublev, on the contrary, descends from heaven to earth. His reference to the course of the development of Marx’s thought and political life to discover the relationship between democracy and communism is the crystallization of the meta physicalism of previous philosophers. It is not without reason that he insists on presenting Marx as the successor of Spinoza! A point that I will discuss later. Regardless of what the process of Marx’s intellectual and theoretical transformations during his life was, and regardless of how wrong or right Rubel assessed these transformations, in any case the reality of democracy and communism cannot be explained on the basis of the characteristics of the transition of Marx’s views from one to the other. Such an attitude is deeply and in every respect in conflict with the material and scientific explanation of social phenomena.
Individuals, groups, and intellectual and political representatives of different classes can have different and conflicting perceptions of the issue of democracy. These distinctions, despite their realism and naturalness, do not call into question the historical and class essence of the phenomenon. What determines the content, message, political structure, or place of democracy in human life is not the specific interpretations of social tendencies and groups, but precisely the mode of production and the specific socio-economic relations in which democracy becomes relevant as a prerequisite for its development, survival, and reproduction. The discussion of democracy in the present era and in all recent centuries of history is a discussion of the contracts and conventions of capitalist society. At best, it is a discussion of the development of the civil structure of capitalist society with the aim of organizing “public interventions”!! Within the walls erected by the laws of reproduction, wage slavery relations are adapted to the preconditions of capital’s profitability and the subjugation of human desires, freedoms, and the whole of human life under the domination of wage labour. The achievement of “civil rights,” “political freedoms,” or “social interventions” of individuals in democracy is, in any case, determined by the interests and necessities of capital’s reproduction. Rublev separates democracy from its material and class foundations and makes with it the same deal that Hegel made with the “Absolute Idea” or that his fellow thinker, Ralph Miliband, makes with the same question of democracy. Miliband also believed that the democratic movement existed long before socialism and that it was ultimately socialism that would reconcile democracy with its true translation. He also believed that “socialism is part of the struggle to deepen and expand democracy in all spheres of life and the result of continuous and constant pressure from below for the development of democratic rights until the final decline of power as the organizing principle of social life.” Both – Rouble and Miliband – avoid analysing democracy as a political superstructure of economic relations or a mode of material production in a separate history and consider it consciously or unconsciously as a phenomenon beyond history, classes or class struggle.
According to this theory, humanity has struggled throughout history, from the time of ancient Greece to the present day, for the realization of democracy. The struggle that is ongoing and is the common ground of all forms of human struggle against all forms of injustice and oppression, and even inequality and class exploitation in the future!! Socialism is also a phase of deepening and intensifying this struggle, the content of this phase of human democratization will be the liberation of humanity from the domination of any power. Rublev’s formulation of the link between democracy and communism also carries with it another very wrong, deterministic, and non-Marx view: that the working and subordinate humanity of the world, in order to be freed from the clutches of exploitation and the misery of capitalism, must necessarily wait for the universal and ubiquitous development of democracy. This theory, even though Rublev has not put it forward explicitly, at least in the present article, usually carries with it another complementary theory. That the practical realization of communism or the occurrence of the workers’ and socialist revolution is not a function of the class struggle, nor the result of the socialization of communism in the workers’ movement, nor the result of the growth, development, formation, and strengthening of the movement to abolish wage labour, but is rather dependent on the growth of the productive forces and the fruitless development of industry, capitalist civilization, and democracy!! In this theory, Rublev has fallen into the lap of a fatalistic, deterministic evolution, whether he likes it or not. According to his inference, the proletariat must first develop democracy to the utmost possible limits and, in this regard, naturally bear the entire burden of capitalist barbarity, exploitation, and crime with the aim of completing the process of industrial expansion and institutionalizing capitalist society. Then, by crossing this threshold in a predestined path, it will finally one day leap from democracy to communism.
This theory denies the basis of class struggle and the essence of Marx’s view of the movement to abolish wage labour by the working class. Below we will show how some of the so-called left, nationalist, and social reformist parties of the world hide their anti-working-class nature from the working class under the shadow of these theories or ideologies. The belief that communism is a stage in the development of democracy with the content of ending exploitation and the existence of social classes, in itself implies that the working masses of the world, in any circumstances, instead of pursuing their freedoms, political rights, welfare expectations and social demands from the basis of class war against the basis of wage labour, must, by hanging themselves on the gallows of democracy, consign the existence of their class movement to the swamp of blind historical fatalism and a kind of fatalistic, fruitless behaviour. What Rublev and his ilk theorize and what they slanderously attribute to Marx, is the crystallization of an attitude that has historically tried to deviate the world labour movement from the track of communism to social reformism. Everywhere it has instilled the false impression that “to reach communism, one must definitely pass through the land of democratic miracles”! It has sprung up in dozens of different philosophical, ideological, and political forms and shapes on the path of the working class in the four corners of the world, in order to somehow divert the international labour movement from the true path of the socialist struggle in each separate guise.
Contrary to what Rublev and his ilk think, in a capitalist society the socialist struggle of the working class is not dependent on the struggle for the development of democracy. The attempt to expand the boundaries of democracy in a society built on the basis of wage labour, as long as this basis itself does not become the target of the communist attack of the proletariat, will in no way be synonymous with the advance of the labour movement towards communism. This attempt, in the absence of a powerful communist movement, can even be accompanied by the dissolution of the working class in bourgeois solutions and the separation of the working masses from the real track of the socialist movement of their class. It is completely wrong to say that the rise of the communist movement of the working class is dependent on ever greater industrial growth and the ever-greater development of democracy in society. Neither the gigantic and legendary industrial growth of Western Europe nor the democracy prevalent in these countries has in itself placed before the workers any automatic electronic ladder for the ascent of the movement for the abolition of wage slavery. Working-class communism is a movement with its own social alternative, with its own specific current demands, with a means of organization corresponding to the requirements of its own rise and power, a movement against the totality of the capitalist system, which also views every kind of economic, political and social rights or demands of the working masses from the same platform. In every part of the world where the wage labour relationship determines the fate of human life, regardless of how far industrial development and the degree of development of democracy or civil society have progressed, the project of a comprehensive and transparent communist alternative, the organization of a movement to abolish wage labour, and the struggle to replace the existing objectivity with socialism, is as vital a matter for the working class as breathing free air and the very essence of life.
The development of the civil structure in the wage labour system is the development of the scaffolding for the proletariat to rely on agreements and contracts corresponding to the reproduction of social capital. Where the basis of wage labour is to be combated, the entire structure of democracy and civilization that exists is also attacked in the same way. The belief that democracy is the gateway to communism practically disarms the class movement of the proletariat against democracy. It sanctifies that which is itself the instrument of imposing wage slavery on the working masses and warns the workers that they must go along with the bourgeoisie in defending and safeguarding this order!! For example, the working class must respect parliamentarism and refrain from fighting to weaken it. Respect the civil laws and contracts arising from the relationship of surplus value production and align the way it advances and deepens its class struggle against capital with them!! Be faithful to syndicalism and unionism and look with contempt at its contradiction with the conditions and conditions of organizing the movement for the abolition of wage labour!! Consider the political freedoms existing in this or that capitalist society as a guarantee of the freedom of its class struggle and support them!! In a word, consider what takes place in the realm of democracy not as an instrument of domination of capitalist relations, but as a set of a social order beyond class, and consider the consolidation and deepening of this order as a necessary condition for the transition to communism.
Here, the cry of protest of all the democratic tendencies, and not only the supporters of Rublev and Miliband, will certainly be raised: how can the working class organize its socialist movement without achieving political freedoms and civil rights?! In response, it must be said that the discussion is absolutely not about denying the importance of political freedoms in the development of the class struggle and the communist rise of the proletariat. The conversation is about how the working-class views democracy and its connection with communism. Rublev and his associates refer the organization of the movement for the abolition of wage labour of the working masses to the establishment of democracy and the existence of civil rights, while for the communist activists of the labour movement the issue is presented in a fundamentally different and contradictory way. The proletariat points the sharp edge of its aggression towards the relationship of buying and selling labour power. Here, civil rights or political freedoms with a democratic content or democracy in general are not the starting point. Freedom of speech or any other political and social freedom, the right to organize, and all civil rights immediately present their subjectivity, but with a place and content fundamentally different from the narrative that Rublev presents. When the working class attacks the basis of wage labour, it also demands freedom of speech and the right to organize as an effective tool, tool, and weapon for carrying out this struggle. Precisely for this reason, its right to vote and freedom of election do not take the path of parliamentarianism and do not interfere with parliamentary democracy. His right to organize does not shake hands with syndicalism or social reformist parties, and communism does not bury itself in the cemetery of the union movement. In the same vein, his right to freedom of expression, opinion, and thought does not melt away in the dense vapor of suffocating capitalist ideas arising from the process of capital reproduction.
There is a huge difference between examining human freedoms and civil rights from the perspective of working-class communism and the preconditions for the explosion of the movement for the abolition of wage labour, or, conversely, observing all this from the perspective of the fates of the capitalist order. In the first case, we will understand freedom of expression not as the free expression of our expectations of the capitalist system, but as the comprehensive freedom of the working and subordinate masses to issue a communist and class indictment against the entirety of capitalism and to develop this indictment moment by moment against any manifestation of capitalism. We will define free organization as a means of pursuing and organizing the movement for the abolition of wage labour. We understand the right of citizenship as the right of direct, penetrating and free intervention of every human being in the planning of production and social work, and we will refer the equal rights of men and women, the solution of the family problem, the right to education, health and social welfare and all other issues with a content and meaning corresponding to the necessary preconditions for the victory of the socialist movement. Looking from this perspective, it places the working class on the threshold of establishing a world beyond the world of capitalism and will understand the meaning of freedom and citizenship rights in the freedom of humans to establish this world. While the second perspective, that is, the dark observatory of democracy, converts all these decisions, rights and expectations into a tool for imposing wage slavery on workers in the fog of the beliefs and thoughts of the profiteer of capital. The first perspective feeds the worker’s mind with the process of fundamental change in the existing economic, political, and social order; it mobilizes him for an active intellectual and practical struggle to realize it, and in this regard, it opens the encyclopaedia of communism to him in order to find the true meaning of freedom and civil rights. The second perspective leads him to the ruins of capitalist civil rights and, in the monasteries of preaching and exhorting the sanctity of profit, surrenders him to the merciless clutches of slavery to capital.
Rublev understands the relationship between democracy and socialism in a distorted way. Instead of declaring the crushing power of the communist struggle of the proletariat to be the “legislator” of freedom and civil rights of people, he, on the contrary, searches for the immobile strength to follow the path of communism in the barren desert of democracy!! Rublev tries to completely distort Marx’s words about the workers’ revolution and to empty them of their real class content in favour of democracy. Marx spoke of the seizure of political power by the working class and the period of transition to communism. Here he did not attempt to construct any stereotypes for the phasing of the revolution or the sanctity of democracy as the path to a society freed from wage labour. Most importantly, Marx’s words, like the words of any human being, and especially as the words of the most astute communist in history, can finally be understood in the context of history and in the context of the process of changes in the struggle or the arrangement of class forces. Maximilian Rubl draws the conclusion from Marx’s words that he considered political revolution to be the phase of realizing democracy. A phase without passing through which it was not possible to prepare the working-class revolution for communism!! Marx’s view on the seizure of political power by the working masses and the workers’ state of the “transitional period”, independent of the specific characteristics that this particular circle of the workers’ revolution may have in different historical conditions or at different levels of the arrangement of forces between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, is in any case not an unknown and vague theory. The essence of Marx’s discussion in this regard lies precisely at the opposite point to Rubl’s inference.
Marx proposes the dictatorship of the proletariat not because it would fulfil the democratic ideals of the working class, but because of its real place in the actual process of abolishing wage labour. Socialism, according to Marx, becomes a reality in the abolition of the relationship of buying and selling labour power. The abolition of this relationship requires the end of the existence of the state above society and the direct participation of individual citizens in the planning of work and social production or the socialist distribution of all welfare and social facilities. These two are continuous and organic aspects of one process. The process that Marx calls the objective process of the decline of the state is at the same time the real process of the abolition of wage labour. Here, no democratic or socialist phasing is considered, and Marx’s vision, solution, and thought show no interest in any phasing beyond the class struggle. Within this process, the working masses achieve the highest form of freedom and human rights and are freed from the captivity of any form of government beyond themselves, simply by breaking the shackles of wage labour from their hands and feet, and simply because breaking the shackles of wage labour and liberating themselves from the domination of any social institution over themselves are distinct but homogeneous aspects of one process.
What Rublev insists on here and wrongly attributes to Marx is precisely what has for more than a century separated a large part of the working masses of the world from the front of their class revolution and lined them up behind the anti-worker and anti-communist dreams of the bourgeoisie. The familiar discussion of the “stage of revolution”, “people’s democracy”, “the leadership of the proletariat over the democratic revolution”, “the condition of the political and civil development of capitalist society for the growth of the socialist movement of the workers”, “first the democratic revolution and then socialism” or other theories of this kind are all both the presentation and the foundation of this theory. The spirit and message of all these theses is that the working class should abandon its struggle against the basis of capitalist exploitation and submit to the moment-by-moment intensification of its exploitation, disenfranchisement, and misery in favour of the development of capitalist accumulation or the ever-increasing profits of social capital. The talk of a “democratic revolution” and the historical suspension of the direct struggle of the workers against capitalism, along with the mythologizing of the role of democracy for socialism, is a story that has been whispered in the ears of workers everywhere, with the help of which they have sunk the labour movement into the swamp of nationalist and social reformist illusions. The premise of all these theories has been that the working class does not look at communism in terms of political freedom, daily economic and social demands, or its human rights, but rather, by consigning communism to the future of history, it estimates all the highs and lows of its expectations or the reach of its power and possibilities with the eyes and brain of bourgeois borrowing and in the narrowness of the dark and hazy horizon of capitalism. The philosophy of stages and stage-building is the instillation of the belief that without having a society filled with the most advanced industries, the highest achievements of technology and knowledge, the highest level of labour productivity, the most educated specialists, the largest universities, the most populous unions and parties, one cannot talk about the abolition of wage labour!! The key to achieving all of this lies in the hands of democracy!! And it is only after these are achieved that one can knock on the door of socialism without fear of dictatorship and suffocation and with a very high level of industry and technology!! Rublev does not explicitly speak of these conditions in his article “Marx and Democracy”, but as we have said, he considers democracy to be the forced passageway to communism and considers communism to be a phase in the development of democracy, and he attributes all this to Marx:
“It is only in his seclusion in Kreuznach, after leaving the editorial board of the Rheinische Zeitung, that Marx takes advantage of his inaction to study deeply the revolutionary history of France, England and America. It is this study that undoubtedly convinces him that the natural and inevitable end of a republic based on democracy is communism, that is, where, with real democracy, the political state disappears.”
We see that communism in Rublev’s version is not fundamentally a movement of the working class against wage labour, just as democracy cannot be associated with any specific mode of production and social relations!! Democracy is a phenomenon of both human nature and human destiny throughout history, which gradually becomes more and more perfect and finally reaches its ultimate perfection in communism!! Social democracy, at least in the first decades of its existence, used similar beliefs and theories as a guarantee of the working class’s withdrawal from pursuing the communist struggle against capitalism. And the heir parties of Social Democracy of that era continue to use these same words to hide their full-fledged capitalist nature from the eyes of the workers. Now some of these parties and groups in Western Europe claim that they want to end the domination of capitalist relations through the development and deepening of democracy!!
Rublev and Quoting Marx
Rublev attributes his account of the relationship between communism and democracy to Marx and the course of his thought and political life. We said above that instead of analyzing the material phenomena, he refers to how they are reflected in people’s thoughts, and in this regard, he believes that he has turned to Marx. According to his perception, Marx learned his worldview and understanding of human relations from Spinoza!! He says:
“Marx seems to want to state that he has taken all the necessary elements for the formulation of his worldview and human relations from Spinoza.”
Rubel declares the Dutch philosopher’s democracy to be the deepest type of democracy!! And for this reason, he is very insistent on paying his respects to Marx by preparing a genealogy of beliefs and tracing the roots of his beliefs to the great prophet of democracy!! Rubel, with all his efforts to attribute Marx’s political views to Spinoza, does not provide any documents or statements about his claim. Apparently, Marx’s study of that philosopher’s works was enough for him to reach this conclusion!! This point, of course, is not of much interest to us. The main point is Ruble’s excessive idealist insistence on emptying Marx’s teachings of their real class, historical and scientific content. In his discussion of ideology in general and German ideology in particular, Marx, while explaining the vulgarity of the theories of the various Hegelian sects, writes:
“It has not even occurred to any of these philosophers to investigate the connection between German philosophy and German reality, the connection between their criticism and their material environment.” (The German Ideology)
What he says to the young and old Hegelians, on a broader level, also includes all previous philosophers, and primarily philosophers like Spinoza. By pointing out this view that “the consciousness of men does not determine their existence, but their social existence determines their consciousness,” Marx pointed out, more than anything else, the despair of all sides of previous theories and philosophies in explaining the objectivity of existence and, inevitably, in changing this objectivity. Spinoza is also among those whose philosophical beliefs and convictions have not led anywhere to explain the social existence of man, and on this basis, he has not been able to present any solution or horizon for the liberation of man from the evils of exploitation and the state and the superior power over the heads of men. Ruble, who had previously considered Marx’s communism a theoretical discovery! And then he considered this theoretical discovery as the product of the development of Marx’s account of democracy, now he tries to show the source of this democracy in Spinoza’s Divine Treatise!! Apparently, everything that has introduced Marx as Marx to the people of the world and to the international working class is far too unreliable in Ruble’s political and intellectual measuring device to be able to cut off the shadow of the guardianship of Spinoza’s philosophy or the elixir radiance of this philosopher’s treatise on religion and state!!
There are various ways to divert the minds of the working people from the correct understanding of Marx’s teachings. What Rublev does is one of these ways. According to this strategy, instead of understanding the aforementioned teachings as a communist critique of capitalist relations, instead of seeking Marx’s explanation of democracy in relation to “civil society” and the analysis of civil society in a political economy, instead of seeking the root of all injustices, oppressions or the nature of the state, dictatorship and political order, all in the heart of the relationship between labour and capital, Marx’s teachings, instead of being viewed from this perspective and placed in such a place, are stamped with the philosophical findings of Spinoza. The political order corresponding to the process of abolishing wage labour is connected to an interpretation or interpretation of Spinoza’s “reconciliation of natural rights and social existence” and is thereby deprived of all its class and communist validity. Rubel has not understood the essence of Marx’s material understanding of history, society, and the process of generalizing this understanding to the analysis of civil society. Spinoza is separated from time and from the historical conditions of his time; his thoughts, instead of being considered the consciousness of human existence in the seventeenth century, are interpreted as extraterrestrial thoughts above the head of history; and Marx and his anatomy of the capital relation, the class struggle, or his communist critique of wage labour relations also suffer the same fate and are cut off from the historical conditions of their time. With the help of all these works, by drawing a line on the material understanding of history, by washing away the contrasting class and historical ethereal colours in which the political and theoretical views of Marx on the one hand and Spinoza or philosophers similar to him on the other float, Rublev finally succeeds in creating a world free from the colour of classes, history and class struggle in history. He introduces Marx as the successor of Spinoza!! And he pulls the root of working-class communism out of the radical class critique of wage labour and plants it in Spinoza’s philosophy of the “unity of nature and the creator”!! A very fundamental question arises here. What problem is all this ups and downs in the dark wilderness of baseless arguments supposed to solve?! The answer seems to be that Marx must be acquitted of the charge of ignoring democracy! There is no better example of the famous proverb “Aunt Bear’s Friendship”.
In Rublev’s philosophical study, Marx appears everywhere as a philosopher with everyday philosophical preoccupations!! In Rubel’s view, Marx is a philosopher who is engaged in the journey of horizons and souls in the world of thought!! “Rousseau’s exploration of the social contract”, “critique of Hegel”, “critique of Feuerbach”, “appeal to Spinoza”, belief in democracy as “the highest product of human evolution”, in contrast to what forms the content of Hegel’s theory of the state, and finally the discovery of the dictatorship of the proletariat as true democracy and the circle of the evolution of democracy to communism, are the components that Rubel insists on making the journey and conduct in them the record of Marx’s political life!! In the world of Rubel’s investigations, Marx’s words, opinions, analyses and teachings are not the embodiment of the human effort of a social class in a society based on a mode of material production with the aim of responding to the problems of the class and social movement of that particular class and opening up horizons to that class. The basic feature of the anthropocentricity of Marx’s views and thoughts is also pursued in tearing apart the earthly existence of this anthropocentricity and creating its school in the world of ideas. The fever of fulfilling this mission so envelops Rubel in its heat that he sees all of Marx’s words upside down. Pay attention to the quote he quotes from Marx regarding the issue of democracy:
“Just as it is not religion that creates man, but man creates him, it is not the constitution that creates the people, but the people who create it. It can be said that democracy is to other forms of government what Christianity is to other religions. Christianity is the perfection of religion, the essence of religion, man deified, who becomes a special religion. In the same way, democracy is the essence of the political constitution: man socialized, who becomes a special political constitution… Man does not exist because of the law, but the law exists for the sake of man: here democracy is a human existence, whereas in other political forms man is a legal existence. Such is the fundamental characteristic of democracy.”
Rublev listens attentively to Marx’s discussion of the distinction between democracy and dictatorship or the various forms of previous states, but he does not see the depth of Marx’s view of democracy. Here, the relationship between democracy and other forms of state is compared to the relationship between Christianity and other religions. The essence of Marx’s statement in this specific relationship is that the democratic state is the most perfect form of state that has ever existed. Just as the capitalist mode of production is the most developed form of the mode of production in comparison with the economic systems that preceded it. But if Marx’s insistence on the perfection of the capitalist system can be interpreted as his inattention to the inhuman nature of this system, then his comparison between democracy and other forms of government would also have given Rublev the opportunity to present Marx, the standard-bearer of the movement for the abolition of wage labour, as a hard-working defender of democracy! It is very thoughtful that in the same sentence above, Marx evaluates democracy as “the essence of the political constitution”; just as Christianity is evaluated as the essence of religion. Christianity, despite its differences from past religions, is ultimately a religion and carries within itself the entire superstition, inversion, worship, petrification and metamorphosis of human existence in the most complete form. Democracy, while being the perfection of the constitution of the previous systems of history, is nevertheless a constitution of a social system, and this social system, as far as we are concerned, is the capitalist system. The Rublev hangs itself on every door and wall so as not to come into contact with the real essence of Marx’s words. Continuing the aforementioned quote from Marx, he adds:
“Marx here brings his own intellectual elements, which in fact do not fit into the framework of democracy, except at the cost of its effort. It is much later that Marx relies on empirical principles and links to the concept of democracy another concept that he deduced from it, namely the dictatorship of the proletariat. In both cases, only one issue is at stake: determining the fate of the people in their own hands.”
We observe that in Rublev’s research, Marx is a thinker who looks at democracy only from six angles, and his discovery of the dictatorship of the proletariat is also fundamentally an attempt to save democracy from corruption!! Apparently, his difference from other philosophers and thinkers lies only in his theoretical discoveries!! He discovers democracy with the help of Spinoza’s teachings; He criticizes Hegel and criticizes his theory of the state; he extends his discovery of democracy to communism; and of course, his starting point in this theoretical journey and conduct has been human freedom. But in order to achieve the secret of this freedom, he has expanded his exploration in the above theoretical and philosophical premises, until he finally reaches communism!! In Rublev’s research, Marx is not a man in the battle of class struggle, he does not understand democracy as a phenomenon derived from a specific mode of material production, he does not consider human freedom as freedom from exploitation, injustice and misery arising from a specific mode of production and social system. His communism is not the crystallization of the proletariat’s class critique of the capitalist system; for him, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not a moment in advance of the movement to abolish wage labour by the working class. He is a philosopher who travels in the world of thought, and in this passage, his belief in democracy gives way to the theory of communism.
Rublev examines Marx’s entire life through this lens. Elsewhere in this article, he explains Marx’s approach to American society and the fate of democracy in that society. He believes that Hamilton, after reading a report on the living conditions of the American people and learning about the injustices or gross class differences in that country, expresses concern about the future of American democracy. Hamilton predicts war and conflict between the masses of the deprived and the wealthy in the aforementioned society and predicts its outcome in the seizure of state power by the suffering: “For democracy necessarily ends in anarchy and usurpation.” Rublev continues by quoting these materials, that Marx carefully examines Hamilton’s observations, confirms everything, and the only change he makes in Hamilton’s notes is the replacement of the words anarchy and usurpation with communism. Here too, Marx’s communism is ultimately the product of the forced development of democracy, not the movement for the abolition of wage labour by the working masses, nor the social alternative that the working class must have at the forefront of its movement and plan to establish after the dismantling of the capitalist system.
Rublev, who previously considered Marx’s “theory of democracy” to be due to his studentship under Spinoza, after quoting these materials, declares Marx’s acquaintance with the “new science of society” to be his spiritual inheritance from Tocqueville, a believer in Christianity, and then Hamilton!! Rubel says that Marx was a hero of the struggle for democracy throughout his life and that even after becoming a communist, he never severed ties with liberalism and democracy!! He cites Marx’s struggle alongside the Chartists, his writing of hundreds of anti-Bonaparte articles during the reign of Napoleon III, his struggle against Tsarism and its puppet, the Prussian government, his support for the North against the South during the American War of Independence, his support for the Paris Commune, and finally Marx’s simultaneous participation in the Communist League and the Society of Democrats in Brussels, or his writing of the Manifesto and his speech during those days on the importance of free trade, the publication of the journal Desmocranium in Cologne, and so on, all as reliable evidence of Marx’s commitment to democracy. What Ruble completely forgets in all these citations and conclusions is the obvious fact that in all these territories and entrenchments, Marx was the standard-bearer of the movement for the abolition of wage labour and not a chest-deep lover of democracy. June 2002
Sources:
1- The second issue of Akhtar magazine, article “Marx and Democracy”, Maximilian Rublev, translated by Mustafa Hashemi;
2- “The Future of Socialism”, article by Ralph Miliband, translated by Nasser Zarafshan