Monthly Review this month published some of the 1950s-60s correspondence between Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse and Left economist, Paul Baran.
The following quotes a passage from one of Bran's letters to Marcuse, which trashes Erich Fromm's 1961 Marx's Concept of Man. This is followed by Russell Rockwell's contrasting interpretation of Fromm's work, explaining his implicit harsh critique of Marcuse's recent interpretations of Hegel.
From March 1, 2014 Monthly Review
Baran/Marcuse Correspondence
July 11, 1961
Big Sur, California
Dear Herbert,
...Your remark that even the most ossified Marxism is these days a fountain of truth
compared with what parades as social science and philosophy was to me a particularly à
compared with what parades as social science and philosophy was to me a particularly à
propos since I had just finished reading the Introduction by Fromm to a paperback edition
of Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Marx’s Concept of Man, New York,
1961).14 You must have a look at this thing, if you haven’t yet. This outpouring of
Fromm’s setzt wirklich dem Fass die Krone [really tops it all off]. After Mr. Strachey and
Co. have turned the old man into a meritorious—if somewhat confused—predecessor of
Keynes and Gaitskill, Mr. Fromm promotes him to a follower of Meister Eckhart and to a
Zen Buddhist thus providing him with the distinction of having anticipated no less a figure
than Erich Fromm himself.15 On all of the 80 pages of the rubbish that he wrote about
Marx—in order to acquaint the American public with thoughts of “that great thinker”—
Fromm managed not to mention once the class struggle, not to use once the word
revolution, not to say anything about the development of the forces of production, about
antagonistic interests. I don’t think that I have ever read anything as scandalous and at
the same time as manifestly dishonest. The fellow falsifies outright, misquotes, garbles.
Even by the current standards the whole thing is an absolute outrage. By the way, since
he finds it expedient to lick your boots on a couple of occasions, it would be most
desirable if you reviewed this thing somewhere. Rejecting positivism is one thing,
sinking into the mud of mysticism is another. And surely there is nothing that is more
conducive to discrediting Marx in the eyes of such young people who at least potentially
might begin to understand something than exposing them to the gibberish that Mr. Fromm
has the temerity to call Marxism.
From Russell Rockwell, Presentation at November 2013 International Marcuse Conference, Lexington, KY.
It
is well-known that in an appendix to his work Eros and Civilization, Marcuse launched a polemic against Fromm’s
theory development, including works Fromm had written while both he and Marcuse
were still members of the ISR. For
example, Marcuse cites the article, “The Social Conditions of Psychoanalytical
Therapy”, Fromm published in the ISR journal in 1935.[1] Marcuse
suggests that Fromm begins to argue that happiness can be found within the
given society, hence conflating Critical Theory and social conformity. Since
the social relevance of Critical Theory resided in its ability to sharpen the
edges of psychology and sociology to enhance their critical function, this was
indeed a stinging assertion. What might be less well-known is that Marcuse
offers high praise for earlier articles Fromm published in 1932-1934. Marcuse
argues that there is a fundamental distinction between Fromm’s earlier and
later articles. In the earlier ones Fromm demonstrated the “explosive”
potential of instinctual structures defined by Freud: when social conditions
change to undermine the “patricentric, acquisitive culture”, the functions of
instinctual structures change as well—“they cease to be the cement and instead
become the dynamite”. [2]
Yet,
Marcuse’s critique of the social relevance and trajectory of Fromm’s theory may
have served to divert attention from a major change in the trajectory and
social relevance of his own theory. And Fromm was eventually to bring this to
the attention of his readers in his 1961 work, “Marx’s Concept of Man”. [3] Marcuse’s
early 1930s work and many of his writings through Reason and Revolution (where an entire section on the “abolition of
labor” was included) clearly suggested the need for a serious reexamination of
Hegel’s philosophy. This was in the context of unanswered questions concerning
revolutionary praxis, principally labor.
Marcuse’s
Eros and Civilization chapter, titled
“Philosophical Interlude”, suggested something different. [4]
Marcuse indicated Hegel’s continuity with the development of Western philosophy
generally, rather than the incorporation and transcendence of this tradition
associated with Hegelian-Marxian dialectic. Marcuse, much more so than in his
earlier works, conceived Hegel’s Logic
as continuous in essential ways with the logic of domination that evolved
slowly since Aristotle. [5] In
Eros and Civilization, in the context
of his development of Freud’s analysis of Western civilization, especially his
concepts of the performance and pleasure principles, Marcuse analyzed the
evolving idea of reason as historically and increasingly antagonistic to those,
“faculties and attitudes that are receptive rather than productive”. [6] Marcuse
wrote:
Reason
is to ensure, through the ever more effective transformation and exploitation
of nature, the fulfillment of human potentialities. But in the process, the
ends seem to recede before the means: the time devoted to alienated labor
absorbs the time for individual needs—and define the needs themselves. The
logos shows forth as the logic of domination…Hegel’s presentation of his system
in his Encyclopedia ends on the word
‘enjoys’. The philosophy of western
civilization culminates in the idea that the truth lies in the negation of the
principle that governs this civilization—negation in the twofold sense that
freedom appears as real only in the idea,
and that the endlessly projecting and transcending productivity of being comes to fruition in the perpetual peace of
self-conscious receptivity.” [7]
A section of Fromm‘s 1961 work, Marx’s Concept of Man might be understood as a response to this
shift in Marcuse’s theoretical trajectory. It represents a turn-about in the
question of the social relevance of Critical Theory, this time of Marcuse’s in
place of Fromm’s. In Marx’s Concept of
Man (“The Nature of Man”, Part 2 on “Man’s Self-Activity”), Fromm begins by
stating that Marx’s concept of man is
rooted in Hegel’s thinking. [8]
But instead of elaborating on this thought himself, Fromm quotes at length from
Marcuse’s Reason and Revolution on
Hegel’s Science of Logic, where
Marcuse wrote that the task of the dialectical thinker is to, “distinguish the
essential from the apparent process of reality and to grasp their relation…the
world is an estranged and untrue world so long as man does not destroy its dead
objectivity and recognize himself and his own life ‘behind’ the fixed form of
things and laws. When he finally wins this self-consciousness, he is on his way
not only to the truth of himself, but also of his world. And with the
recognition goes the doing. He will try to put this truth into action and make the world what it essentially is, namely, the fulfillment
of man’s self-consciousness.” [9]
Thus
an interesting aspect of Fromm’s analysis of Hegel’s philosophy in Marx’s Concept of Man is that it refers
several times to Marcuse’s Reason and
Revolution to support his own versus Marcuse’s position in their debate
over Freud’s theories and psychoanalysis at the time of publication of
Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization. For
example, Fromm interprets the passage (quoted above) from Marcuse in the
following: “For Hegel the development of individual powers, capacities and
potentialities is possible only by continuous action, never by sheer
contemplation or receptivity…In as much as man is not productive, in as much as
he is receptive and passive, he is nothing, he is dead. In this productive
process, man realizes his own essence, he returns to his own essence.” [10]
[1]
Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, A
Philosophical Inquiry into Freud, 1st Vintage ed. (1955; repr.; New York: Vintage,
1962), 222.
[2]
Ibid., 221.
[3] Erich
Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man (1961;
repr., New York: Continuum, 1961).
[4]
Marcuse, Eros and Civilization,
96-114.
[5]
Ibid., 102-103.
[6]
Ibid., 101.
[7]
Ibid., 101, 105. Compare Marcuse’s analysis of the final paragraph of Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind here with Hegel’s
introduction to the Philosophy of Mind,
which covers the same ground, though in much more detail. (We analyzed this
part of the Introduction in the section above, “Genesis or Dawn—What Happens
After?”). In the first of the two paragraphs that comprise the “Subdivision” of
the Introduction (385 and 386), Hegel summarizes Mind as Subjective (freedom),
Objective (necessity), and Absolute (unity of freedom and necessity). In the
final paragraph 386, Hegel intimates that Subjective and Objective Mind (taken
up in paragraph 385) are both merely “finite”, and only Absolute Mind is
“infinite”. No stronger case can be made than Hegel makes himself here, that he
did not ultimately confine “liberation” to thought alone. Rather, he demonstrated that any theory (and
practice) short of freedom’s social realization merely reflects, “A rigid
application of finitude by the abstract logician…in dealing with Mind and
reason…it is held not a mere matter of logic, but treated also as a moral and
religious concern, to adhere to the point of finitude, and the wish to go
further is reckoned a mark of audacity, in not of insanity, of
thought…philosophy for the concrete forms, has merely to show that the finite is not, i.e. is not the truth, but
merely a transition and an emergence to something higher” .
[8]
Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man, 26.
[9]
Ibid;, 26-27.
[10]
Ibid;, 29-30.
