Social Scientist

The Irresistible Science of Karl Marx Author(s): Murzban Jal Source: Social Scientist, Vol. 38, No. 5/6 (May-June 2010), pp. 22-34 Published by: Social Scientist Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27866708 . Accessed: 29/01/2014 06:46
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The

Irresistible Science of Karl Marx

This

to science, as at the entrance to hell, the demand must be made: Here must all distrust be left; All cowardice must here be dead.

sketch of the course of my studies in the domain of political economy is intended merely to show thatmy views?no matter how theymay be judged and how little they confirm to the interested prejudices of the ruling classes?are the outcome of conscientious research carried on over many years. At the entrance

Karl Marx,
Economy.

'Preface',A Contribution to theCritique ofPolitical

What

is science today? Narrrow and hard specialization for profit, exploita is culture? Humanity perhaps? Breath and goodness? tion, and control. What No, nothing more than a means for earning money and for dominance. What is philosophy? Perhaps still not a way of earning money, but also very narrow

specialization in the style and spirit of our times. Just look at him, your 'German Burger' of today, this imperialist mine owner who would not hesitate to sacrifice five hundred thousand human beings and twice as many more to annex Briey and to be lord of theworld!

Thomas Mann, Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man.

Amongst the theme of the birth of a "New Science" whether objec tive and verifiable as in Louis Althusser's rendering ofMarxism1 or humanist and emancipatory as with Herbert Marcuse2, or even a de

(")

bunking of this radical novelty as Jur?genHabermas once suggested3, science asWissenschaft is empirical knowledge as distinct from idealist constructs. One has to (as Jacques Lacan once insisted) put the "real object" at the centre of discourse. In this sense Galileo's physics serves as a paradigm shift in the history of the sciences. His telescope showed was not belief that stood at the horizon of human knowledge, that it sciences were thus born not merely as the Eu

but intellect. Modern

leo showed the cosmos freed from onto-theology and the original sin. One had to do the same with the human cosmos. Argumentation and profane reason replaces theology. Dialogical discourse and intersub jectivity replaces monologue. The telescope replaces hysterical blind ness. The material world replaces the transcendent "Idea"4.

ropean sciences, as Edmund Husserl once suggested, but as objective and universal method. Since Galileo there can be no going back. Gali

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The

Irresistible Science of Karl Marx

Methodenstreit inGerman academics where scien developing from the earlier tific knowledge was split in thewarring camps of theGeisteswissenschaften (the human sciences) and theNaturwissenschaften (natural science). Whilst Max Weber, Wilhelm Dilthey, Heinrich Rickert and Georg Simmel propounded the human sciences as radically distinct in form and content from the natural method modelled sciences, the logical positivists argued for a unified scientific after the natural sciences. But the latter would serve only as a weak imitation for the unification method?it would serve only as a repetition on the same

Now along thisvery thesis of themodern sciences as objective knowledge purged from the phantasies ofmythology and the authoritarianism of theol ogy, another theme emerged in themidst of the first imperialistworld war, main pillar namely the crisis of these sciences themselves.Husserl would be the

old theology that science had discarded. But thenwas theology ever discarded? Or was it repressed and was not only positivism but also the anti-positivists in the form of Alfred Sch?tz and Gadamer a return of the repressed? It is here that Marxism known thatMarxism enters the scene of scientific discourse. It iswell stands out as a science, a science thatMarx himself

titled as "critique"?a point that not only covered the original Kantian con cern of the analysis of the conditions of knowledge, but the analysis also of human emancipation. Science, or "scientific dialectics" as Marx called it, is derived "from a critical knowledge of the historical movement which itself produces thematerial conditions of emancipation".5 Science does not involve the traditional philosophical concern of the study of the Being of beings,but

the historicity of Being, that is governed by the philosophy of emancipation. The natural scientific concern ofmatter inmotion is transformed in the text of radical historicity (history inmotion) inwhich socialism comes knocking at the doors of world history. The question of Being (Sein) is replaced by the Marx involves the com idea of becoming (Werden). It is in thismanner that interest bination of the scientific that comprises description, explanation and prediction with emancipatory interest.There could be no tearing away of the revolutionary "ought" from the "is". In contrast to this reading of Marxism as a science are two antitheti cal sites: that of metaphysics thatMarx chided as "apparitions", "spectres",

"whimsies" and other types of idealist humbug as also mere images of the empirical fetters of society6 and the space called utopia. Engels's Socialism: Utopian and Scientific sharply divided science from utopia. Science had the essential moments of description, explanation and prediction based on verifi able material principles, whilst utopia is a mere longing for an apparent just

or even sometimes a classless society but based more on metaphysical sermons that on material practice. Science occupies a verifiable space, utopia occupies an alien space. In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels talked of the

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action of the proletariat and transfigured politics in the "blind belief in the new gospel".8 Their founderswere revolutionaries; their followerswere found ers of reactionary sects.9 The space that theyoccupy is alien space because their on is based the politics metaphysics of the estranged mind. And it is to this estranged mind that philosophy must turn its attention. One needs to study utopia because humanity is not merely theAristotelian zoon politikon, but the In contrast to this idyllicUtopian is the real science ofMarxism. The con crete science that Marx discovers is the science of historywith the three sub zoon politikon that seeks utopia.10

not want to get involved in the politics of class struggle,but in factwanted to preach class reconciliation.7 They violently opposed the independent political

somewhat emancipated thinking of the Utopian communists, but an eman cipation thatwas tied down by its own metaphysics, a metaphysics that did

also involves the study of estranged zoon politikon as also the emancipation from this estrangement. The era of corporate imperialism, or late imperialism

sites: forces of production, relations of production and ideological superstruc ture as its essential motor force. And along with this concrete science Marx

in crisis, is a perfection of this estranged zoon politikon. One cannot shy away from it.One has to encounter it.The name of this radical encounter is dialec tical and historical materialism.11 And in this radical revolution itbecomes a

material force and literally "grips themasses"12. II Western Reason. According to a certain line of thinkingwe live in the grips of Western Reason: one stressed by Husserl There are two dominant strands of

Western Dasein

from the dangers of Bolshevism.13Whilst the first stream of Western Reason ends in themodern sciences, the second one culminates in mythopoetics. There is it seems, a peculiar type of telos, almost a form of an iron law, what Heidegger called the "destiny of Being" which governs both West. Yet we are gripped by these strands of Reason. We do not exist in the Western Reason. this double edge of And in this response to the double effectofWestern Western Reason the critique of the doubling effectsof reason we take up

one, again beginning with the Greeks and this time not culminating in themodern sciences, but inmytho poetics, to be precise European fascism thatwould, as Heidegger claim, rescue Western Reason strand of

and isbuilt on the idea of rationality. It culminates in themodern sciences, to be precise technological reason, the domain thatHegel called Verstand (un derstanding). Verstand is strictlyspeaking not reason (Vernunft).The second is theHeideggerean

(and taken over by the Frankfurt School), the other being articulated byMar tinHeidegger. In the firstarticulation,Western Reason begins with theGreeks

(primarily the human

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The

Irresistible Science of Karl Marx

Marx outlines this scientificwill in two Young Hegelian concepts?Gattung swesen (species being) and das menschlicheWesen (the human essence) where

istholism Marx outlines in his theoryof the sciences whereby he distinguishes himself from both themetaphysians as well as the technological rationalists. Now according toMarx, science is not merely a technological enterprise?a will tomere knowing, but an emancipator project?a will to human freedom.

the critique of estranged reason finds concrete articulation. We begin by highlightingMarx's views on the sciences. For Marx just as with Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind truth lies in thewhole. Yet Marx's holism isdistinct from Hegel's idealist holism. And thisnature of dialectical material

the philosophy ofMarxism: the critique of the estranged mind. The former asks the question: "how is history possible?", whilst the latter asks: "how is hu manity possible?" It is in this question: how is history-humanity possible that

ist critique of the crisis of themodern sciences) based on Marx's reflections on the relation between reason, the sciences and society. Along with this the science of Marxism: historical materialism?we have discovery?called

he views existence not in the estranged biblical form of the subject-object, human-nature split.Marx consequently claims that the scientific enterprise

cannot be reduced to an estranged mind studying a reified nature, nor the control by this estranged mind of reified nature. The double will to knowing and human freedom cannot become a will to power. The very idea of calcula tion and control have to be expunged from the scientific enterprise.

One does not have to unconsciously give consent to the fragmentation of the sciences that capitalism drives them to. Instead one has to de-alienate the sciences from this ghettoization of knowledge. One has to argue of a
science?a coherent non-schizophrenic science?Marx uses the term "one

But besides emphasising on the idea of human emancipation as the core issue of the sciences,Marx also involves a radical critique of the intervention of the capitalist division of labour (and this same ideology) into the sciences.

science of history with science", a "single science" (or a unified science)?a its "two (inseparable) sides" of the history of nature and the history of hu
manity.14

of humanity" (Wissenschaft vomMenschen) into the natural sciences.15This new science?historical materialism?is now known as "human natural sci

essence from the appearance. The former keeps the humanist and naturalist concern central to itsphilosophical repertoire, whilst the latteractively negates it. What we have in the Marxist landscape is the incorporation of the "science

So what Marx does is differentiate the science of emancipation?the his toricalmaterialism of Gattungswesen and das menchlicheWesen?the human istnatural sciences from the ideology of the sciences, and thus distinguish the

We now have ence" which is at the same time a "natural science of humanity"16.

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_ >

capital accumulation renders it not only metaphysical and theological but also psychotic and barbaric. Both the natural sciences and the philosophical project governed by the capitalist division of labour turn a blind eye to one another.19 They are the two Faustian souls tearing off the breast of humanity. SoThe "human essence of nature" (das menschlicheWesen derNatur) is divorced from the "natural essence of humanity" (das nat?rlicheWesen des Menschen).20

the humanization of nature and the naturalization of humanity.17The biblical of anti-naturalism and to anti-humanism has be exorcised. spirit cYet Marx claims that leaving the natural sciences (which in fact is the realization of the labour of Gattungswesen)18 to the spontaneous activity of

And in this great gap between nature and humanity, between the natural sci ences and the human sciences the crisis of themodern sciences first emerged, a crisis that is inexorably woven to the crisis of capital accumulation. And thus one insists that the problem cannot be posed as themere crisis of the

Marx asks: how Gestalt).21 It is at this site that "estranged form" (entfremdete is "a genuine, comprehensive and real science" possible?22 So ifthe natural sci ences have slumbered into a reified state claiming to have lifeof its own, and

Not only do societywith sciences, but the crisis of the capitalist project itself. its and their infinite ideologies but also science now appears in warring classes

analyse the sciences?one order to humanize it.

sometimes ?ven taking on the role of theology that it itself had removed from the centre stage ofworld history, then one may say that one needs to psycho needs to understand its political unconscious, in

Ill Now Marx's dialectical and historical materialist thesis on scientificholism? isalso thedualist understand human-natural sciences as emancipation?there not the of the did understand sciences?which ing historicity of the scientific method. On one end of the critique of themodern sciences was Husserl who claimed that the European sciences had lost theirbasic humanist concern and on the other end of the spectrum was Horkheimer's and Adorno's Dialectic ofEnlightenmentwhich castigated not only the sciences but the entire project

ofWestern Reason as the tyrannical development from Odysseus to Hitler. It seemed thus that fascism and imperialism were culminating moments of Western Reason with themodern sciences seeming tomediate between the ancient Greeks and fascism. But to understand the history of the problem of the crisis of the sciences one has to understand that the problem is deeply rooted in the neo-Kantian ism of the Heidelberg Circle. According to this type of thinking, especially Dilthey, there is a difference between explanation (Erkl?ren)which functions ~?

in the natural sciences and understanding (Verstehen)which operates in the

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The

Irresistible Science of Karl Marx

social sciences. The latter studies subjective meanings of historical actors a realm totallymissing in the natural sciences. Itwould thus be a fallacy (ac cording to them) tomime the natural sciences and to raise it to an exemplary status. The natural science studies laws independent of human subjects, the human sciences studies not merely human subjects, but their consciousness, will, etc. But there is another dominant featurewhich is present in the debate in themethodology of the sciences, a feature thatwas raised by Georg Luk?cs inHistory and Class Consciousness and Husserl in The Crisis in theEuropean Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.Whilst these two texts are rigor

ously different, there is shared theme?the concern of the loss of the human ist structure of Reason, and the claim that the rise of themodern sciences is modern sciences have responsible for this loss, besides the third claim that the an an itself unexamined base which leads to irrationality.But if the principle Widelbland theme is the critique of positivism (in the 1894 Rectorial address Wilhelm had initiated the critique) the dualism of the neo-Kantian method

Remember Luk?cs was the youngest and latestmember of the Heidelberg Circle who aftera period of romantic anti-capitalism typical of late nineteenth and early twentieth century anarchist thought, drawing inspirations from thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche, Kiekergaard, Dostoevsky and Sorel, would by 1917 shiftto an ultra-left form ofHegelian Marxism. For Luk?cs, Marxism isnot a type of a 'science' modelled after the natural sciences, as much as it is a type of a radical act. For him all Scientific' mime

gave no possibility of a humanist solution. Luk?cs, as the heir to thisKantian dualism would transform the idealist dualism of Kant to Hegelian idealism.

the chief faultwith this thesis being that it leaves out the fundamental thesis Not only would this alleged 'science' relapse ofMarx?revolutionary praxis.23 The main problem into an ideology, but would become a metaphysic itself.24 an we and unexamined base it have uncritical noted earlier) is that would (as thatwould stand outside the 'scientific'process itself. But themain fallacy of the natural sciences, for Luk?cs (he should have said "the ideology of the natural sciences" or "the spontaneous philosophy of the natural scientists") is that it studies supra-historical laws, and thus relapses into a metaphysic of the eternal laws of nature. If history is suspended, then so is the project of revolution.Marxism

taken in creating a theology of the natural-scientific school of thought, but also Engels himself was to blame for constructing the 'dialectics of nature',

sis are fallacious, and Marxism if it attempts tomodel itselfafter the natural sciences would collapse into a quietism typical of the positivist school of thought. In this sense not only would Karl Kautsky and Plekhenov be mis

consequently collapses. There are five loss of this within argument: (1) totalitywithin the natural scientific points model of explanation, (2) rationalized objectivism, (3) pure quantification,

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nature, where humanity is converted into a tool of this inevitably occurring in nature. Fatalism is themain principle of the natural sciences, ^phenomena vo When one talks of necessity, repetition and prediction in the sciences, then life is said to be governed by these apparent fatal laws of nature. Science be

(4) the reification of facts, and (5) abstract formalism. For Luk?cs, none of the above can operate as Marxism. But the chief fallacy is the alleged anti historical nature of the natural sciences, besides the also alleged iron laws of

comes theology. And humanity has to rebel. Anything other than rebellion is folly. If one has to rebel against God to become a humanist, then now one has to rebel against both the natural sciences?and also against nature itself. in this critique is evident. But thenHistory and Class Con sciousnesswould become a sort of a New Age Bible. For the natural sciences

>The Romanticism

(as well as nature) are not only estrangements, but literally the Biblical 'FalT itself?in Luk?cs's words "a charnel-house of long-dead interiorities".25'Man' is condemned not into freedom, but into the reification of the eternal recur

rence of nature. 'Man* is only matter pure and simple (as Luk?cs would read the philosophy of the natural sciences). Consequently materialism becomes an "inverted Platonism.26All scientists are Platonists in the reverse. It is only the soul (Luk?cs's understanding of the proletariat) thatwould rebel against this naturalized-reification of humanity. This thesiswould be in a way both Utopian and radical, radical in the sense that it would challenge if not the very basis of the legitimation of capitalist societies, then at least its instrumental reason?the modern sciences themselves. The modern sciences are both at the same time said to be ratio nalized and reified.And when itwas said (asMarcuse insisted) that science

what the other hand they are understood as ideologicalprojects. In this setting occurrence of techne and ideology happens is that the sciences in the double mime not only the dominant class position, but also the ontological structure of the commodity which is fetishising at itsvery essential nature. So when the Frankfurt School following Luk?cs claimed that pure quantification and the the core negation of qualities (along with the negation of humanity) forms of the natural scientific method, then theywere emphasising Marx's claim in use-val Capital. Marx inCapitalhad said that commodity production negates for In the quest ues and consequently also negates qualities. realizing exchange value itposits pure quantities. What we are left iswith nothing but spectres:

is the concrete project of society, he would be taking up theMarxist theme of the base superstructure dialectic. On the one hand the sciences are read as and on objective, being grounded in the site of productive forces of society

23

Alle seine sinnlichenBeschajfeneiten sind ausgel?scht? all sensuous conditions are extinguished! After peeling off allmateriality there is only one residue left: will And this ghostly reality Gegenst?ndlichkeit)29. "ghostly reality" {gespenstige

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The

Irresistible Science of Karl Marx

It is thus that one is able to understand the critique of rationalization as reification of the Frankfurt School. The crisis of themodern sciences would not only be based on what Husserl called the inability for science to tell us on but also thewill to power?"the need to be authoritative", in anything29, Nietzsche's words, "the need not to 'know', but to subsume, to schematise, for the purpose of intelligibilityand calculation".30 Because humanity and nature are split up in the act of commodity production thewill to calculate and con trol becomes now the leitmotiv of themodern sciences. It also becomes the

dictate not only the political ideology of capitalist societies but also its techni cal apparatus. The five points of Luk?cs's critique of the natural sciences that we noted above are understood in the ontology of the ghostly commodity. The not ghostly commodity only possesses the capitalists but also the scientists. have become the high priests of the capitalist mode of production. They

ideology of societalmodernization. The inherent logic of themodern sciences grounded on commodity production and the accumulation of capital is the logic of violence. It is not only the tedine of themodern science and the telos of Western Reason. It is the theoria itself. To question thisvery basis ofwestern

When it seemed that Platonism and the philosophies of the tran scendent "Idea" had been banished by the modern sciences, then itwas a mistake, because the mathematization of nature initiated by the modern
sciences created a

rationality is now the essential part of radical philosophising. If the sciences have erased the very telos of humanity, then the point is to put thishumanity in the very centre of philosophy.

cuse called it, "of all Platonism".31 This ironic return of idealism was also an ironic end to Western Reason?the fulfilment of its telos as well as its reason because and theoria develop only as the positive sciences, betrayal32, whilst philosophy which "was supposed to give the ends, the objectives, the meanings of science" moves into the background.33 Reason is now divorced, says, from "that rational humanitas envisaged in the original philosophical project, scientific, technological rationality becomes reason
exochen".34

"purely

rational,

ideational

system....the

dream",

as Mar

as Marcuse

Kath'

now meaning not Reason per se, but capitalist izedmodernity?'rationality' economic activity, bourgeois private law, and bureaucratic authority.35So if reason and theoria are reduced to techne, ifreason becomes only instrumental reason and if the originary idea of philosophy that raised the ideas of truth, beauty and goodness are lost thenwhat we have is thebetrayal of the originary exists only in the "name of rationality"which is in project of reason?reason resort but the last political domination.36 nothing

Now not only is the originary project of philosophy betrayed, but so are .theprojects ofmodernity and the Enlightenment. Modernity is now rational

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vo

2 So reason as technological reason or scienticism is strictlyspeaking nei ther scientificnor philosophical. Rather it is ideological, ideological because it is conceived as a social project.37 What we get now is technology and technique as independent realms, independent not only from philosophy, but from the sciences themselves. In fact technological reason pretends itself to be 'sci
ence\

bo PO _ >

For Marxism, the critique of technological reason as the leitmotiv of ^ Western rationality is not focussed on the critique of science, but themo nopoly and regression of the sciences under this social and ideological project. For if scienticism appearing as the reified spectre is critiqued, then one ought not to fall back on themythopoetical attack on the sciences themselves. For when one is attacking the crisis ridden domain of themodern sciences and

Western Reason, one cannot turn to a fictitious Eastern Reason (or any other variation of romantic anti-capitalism) for amythical solution. ForMarx, every society has a tremendous accumulation of the sciences, and as he records in his lesser read Ethnological Notebooks, the non-capitalist societies have had a

history of scientific reasoning. Yet the Eastern Reason that almost inevitably Western Reason ought to be seen as a return of may arise from the critique of the spectre haunting class societies. This type of reasoning is the ideology of economic what Marx preferred calling theAsiatic Mode of Production?the world of the periphery of international capital accumulation who have lost most grotesque discovery of capital out to thewest because thewest with its accumulation colonized it.Colonization

centre and the periphery. Now this ideology-theology of thewest claims that what lies outside itsown realm (the 'rest') has to be occupied. In this pyramid made byWestern Reason the elites of thewest stand on top of the pyramid. And most certainly not any form of Eastern Reason, and most certainly any form of idealizing 'Indian philosophy' is going to destabilize it. In anti-thesis to thiswest/east, science/philosophy, materialism/idealism divide one may recall the symbolic interactive world ofHabermas's communi cative action.Maybe

is themost important 'scientific'dis west. its ideology, but also its theology. Not of the is colonization only covery' Western reason has two main epistemic points (modern Ifwe claimed that sciences / mythopoetics) then it also has twomain geo-political locations: the

3Q

of scientistic or theological method claim access to ultimate truth.There is no ideal type of knowledge standing over and above all other epistemes asking for the celebration of the dictatorship of the scientistic-theologicalmethod.

Western Reason, but hegemony empire"38, whereby not only the hegemony of itself would collapse. There would be no pyramids left. Nor would any ideal type

it is this symbolic interaction that would be able to bridge these great divides. Or else, to borrow Marx's phrase: "itwill drum dialectics into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy Prusso-German

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The

Irresistible Science of Karl Marx

towait in thewings ofworld history.And with the discovery of the continent of history, he was literallyknocking at the doors of world history. May be this iswhat Walter Benjamin meant by the heralding of messianic time. But messianic time ought not to be read in themetaphysics of utopia. It is then that one understands that at each stage in not utopia world history, it-is which is eitherwaiting in thewings, or knocking at the doors?but revolu tions, for revolutions (whether in the history of theoryormaterial practice) as realizing the labour of Gattungwesen are simply irresistible.

According toHegel, all sciences are woven by the thread of the aufgeho ben?the logicwhich raises them at a higher level of existence. Hegel thought (and falsely so) that his science, his Wissenschaft, theWissenschaft der Logik would be the culminating moment of all the sciences and remain at the centre stage ofworld history. Little did he know that historywould propel a certain Karl Marx

Murzban

Jal

is an independent

scholar

based

in Pune.

Notes 1 Louis Lenin For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster Alien Althusser, lane, (London: trans. Ben Brewster and Philosophy, Review (London: Monthly Rousseau, Marx. trans. Ben Politics and History, and Trans. Ben 1969), Press,

(London: Verso, 1982), Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the

Scientists & Other Essays, Brewster others (London: Verso,

1971), Montesquieu,

Brewster

1990).
2 Herbert

(NewYork: OxfordUniversityPress, 1964),One-DimensionalMan. Studies in the Ideology ofAdvanced IndustrialSociety (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991),An Essay
on Liberation

Marcuse,

Reason

and Revolution.

Hegel

and

the Rise

of Social

Theory

The Essential FrankfurtSchool Reader, ed,Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: Continuum, 1985).
3 J?rgen Habermas, 'Technology trans Jeremy J. Shapiro Society, and Science (London: as Ideology', in Toward a Rational Heinemann, 1971).

(London:

Allen

lane,

1969),

'On Science

and Phenomenology',

in

4 Karl Marx, Afterword to theSecond German Edition of Capital ',Capital, Vol. I (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1984), p. 29.
5 Karl Marx, Engels. 144-5. 'To John Baptist Schweitzer, London, January 24, 1865', inMarx. 1975), pp. Selected Correspondence (Moscow: Progress Publishers,

6 Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, The German Ideology (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), pp. 51,61.

31

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o 7 Karl Marx and FredrickEngels, 'TheManifesto of theCommunistParty' in Karl oMarx and FredrickEngels. Selected Works (Moscow: ProgressPublishers, 1975),
<l> P. 61.

8 Ibid.

?
^?

9 Ibid.
10 But in contrastto the above stateddualism: science vs. utopia, ErnstBloc had ^ talked of the necessity of the understandingutopia. To understandnot only Newtonian or Einstienian physics,but also Utopian 2$ thusnot only a science as in as in the world's great religions: Hinduism, ZoroastrianismBuddhism, Judaism, ^2 Christianityand Islam.Marxism is thus essentially Utopian,but a utopia that
a secularised the is (to borrow Bloc's is reversed, utopia which expression) as utopia confronts of setting things on their feet". But then Marxism "power a form of Judeo-Christian an important theme: is Marxism Messianism where 2^ Marxism, but also the human mind, one has to understand utopia. Marxism is

Moses and historybecomes a typeof salvation historyand does notMarx like After all how does of a world saviour? Zarathushtrabecome a modern prototype masses" take place ifnot in the space of utopia? Utopia is the "grippingof the And that iswhy it is not false consciousness. It is longingfor classless society.
is not merely important to state that humanity social and political animal, but a zoon politikon tear away humanity from utopia. the Aristotlean that longs for utopia. zoon politikon?a One cannot

was a terrain World War there opened?the By the timeof theFirst Imperialist was it sciences. If the modern of said?mainly the line of thinking critique
following

the into liberation but a return to myth. Besides is not an "exit" enlightenment Reason there is another terrain to be critiqued?Western sciences modern itself, a to Hitler. But more that reason that formed a strange sort of linear line from Homer the duo of Horkheimer and Adorno, was it Herbert Marcuse who searched for an

modern sciences themselves developingwithinMarxism which claimed thatthe and but be alien essentially authoritarian space (theymay meaningful occupy violent). In fact for Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment,

Engels?that

utopia occupies

alien

space,

then there was

another critique

a "New Science". See sciences he at the same time embraced rejected the modern in The Essential and Phenomenology', 'On Science Herbert Marcuse, Frankfurt

Butwhen he within the movement from Marxist problematic. authentic liberation

School Reader, ed, Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: Continuum, Habermas, Technology 1985.) For a critiqueof this"New Science" see J?rgen
and Science (London: as Ideology', in Toward a Rational Society, trans Jeremy J. Shapiro Heinemann, 1971), pp. 85-6.

What is 11 So how does this scientificdiscovery actually operate in actuality?

that can be labelled as a science? Marx this actuality, this necessity proceeds 4 are A', then the relations of production, to explain: if the forces of production either tend to be, or almost with a type of iron necessity follows the path of 'A'. too so if forces of production become And 'A1', then relations of production follow this same is the moving a problem: if necessity pattern. From this argument there arose toMarx's main argument?the force of history, then what happens

argumentof radical and authenticethics, thephilosophy of praxis?What is the Would Engels's appealing to freedomas 32 relationbetween freedomand necessity?

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The

Irresistible Science of Karl Marx

make

or was ita fable concocted ifnot by Plekhenov (the Was Marx a determinist, fatherof Russian communism) then by Engels himself? In this sense, was Engels a modern day caliph, an urbanAbu Bakr, who was creating themyth of the prophetand the inevitability of the coming of Paradise? Or would such world bourgeoisiewho confusea secular and analogies be mischief plantedby the materialist problematic with a theological one, and thus confuse plain common sensewith faithand divine interventions? Marx After all it iswell known that was not a determinist and by Bestimmung (in the theorem:the economic base determines (bestimmt)an ideological superstructure)is implieddetermination but closely related to the notion of Gestaltung or which is not a determinism,
formation. What comprise Marx thus asks structures? is: how are social structures formed and what their essential

a continuation the "appreciation of necessity" make Marxism historical materialism into the theory of pre-destination

of Spinoza and thus and determinism?

c O" =5

12 Karl Marx,' A Contribution to theCritique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right', in

Karl Marx.

York: Vintage Books, 1975), p. 251.

13 Martin p. 265.. Heidegger, To Herbert

Early

Writings,

trans. Rodney

Livingstone

and Gregor

Benton

(New

War and Fascism, ed. Douglas Kellner (London: Routledge, 1998), Technology, 14 Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982), p. 98; Karl Marx and FredrickEngels, The German Ideology,
p. 34, n.

Marcuse,

January 20,

1948',

in Herbert Marcuse,

15 Karl Marx, Economic and PhilosophicManuscripts of 1844 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982), p. 98. 16 Ibid.,p. 99. 17 Ibid.,p. 92. 18 Ibid.,p. 97.
19 20 Ibid., pp. 97-8. Ibid., p. 98.

21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., p. 97.

23 Georg Luk?cs, History and Class Consciousness (LondonMerlin Press, 1983),

p.3.

24 Ibid. Anna Bostock (London,Merlin 25 Georg Lukacs, The Theory of the Novel, trans. 64. Press, 1994), p. 26 Ibid.,p. 202. 27 Karl Marx, Das Kapital, ErsterBand (BerlinDietz Verlag, 1981), p. 52. 28 Ibid. 33

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Social

Scientist

29

Edmund

Husserl, 1970), p. 6.

rsl cu c D

Phenomenology, Press,

Crisis of the European trans. David Can* (Evanston.

Sciences I.U.:

and

Transcendental University

Northwestern

30 FriedrichNietzsche, The Will toPower, trans., Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), p. 278.
31 Herbert Marcuse, School Reader, 'On Science p. 469. and Phenomenology', in The Essential Frankfurt

\0 i LO O Z 00 m > "?

32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 J?rgen Habermas, 'Technologyand Science as Ideology', inToward a Rational Society, trans.Jeremy Shapiro (London: Heinemann, 1971), p. 81. 36 Ibid., 82 Works and Capitalism in the 37 Ibid. See also HerbertMarcuse, 'Industrialization
of Max Weber', inNegations. Essays in Critical Theory, trans. Jeremy Shapiro

(Boston, 1968). 38 Karl Marx, Afterwordto theSecond German Edition ofCapital', Capital, Vol. I,
p.29.

34

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