Ian Mitchell 1978 Marxism and German Scientific Materialism Annals of Science 15 4 379-400

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ANNALS OF SCIENCE, 35 (1978), 379-400

Marx ism and German Sc ient i f ic Mater ia l i sm

IAN MITCHELL Clydebank Technical College, Kilbowie Road, Clydebank, Scotland

Received 14 November 1977

Summary Nineteenth-century German science was frequently involved in philosophical disputes and also in political issues. Most thinkers wanted their systems to be considered ' scientific ', and Marx and Engels were no exceptions. However, they sharply distinguished their approach from that of the popularizing ' materialist ' philosophers, Biichner, Vogt and Moleschott. In this paper we review the relation of Marx and Engels to these and other tendencies, both in ideas and in personal contacts, and show how they distinguished their 'dialectical' materialism from that which they described as ' vulgar '.

1. Introduction In the past decade or so, Marx's intellectual output has become the object

of study to an enormous extent, and an outpouring of works from the profound to the journalistic have attempted to deal with the historical significance and contemporary relevance of his thought. Yet, rather surprisingly, given that the kernel of the claim of Marxism to superiority over other forms of social knowledge is the claim to scientific status, the relationship of Marx's (and Engels's) thought to scientific ideas has received little attention.

In this article 1 we will study an episode which many have heard of, but none has studied; the relationship of Marx and Engels to the so-called German ' vulgar ' materialists of the mid nineteenth century. In this essay, into which other than the vulgar materialists themselves will necessarily intrude, we will try to answer certain crucial questions. These are: in what way, if any, did Marx and Engels differentiate their own materialism from the optimistic scientific outlook of their contemporaries? Further, did they consider, as did so many nineteenth-century figures, that political ideas had to be based on science? A classic statement of such an outlook, usually called ' scientism ' was given by Ernst Haeckol when he observed: 'We can only arrive at a correct knowledge of the structure and life of the social body, the State, through a scientific knowledge of the structure and life of the individuals who compose it, and the cells of which they are in turn composed ,.a Was this widespread view also that of Marx and Engels?

2. The vulgar materialists We can best lead into this question by examining the responses made by

Marx and Engels to two subsequent developments in nineteenth-century German science; materialism and social Darwinism. The continuity between

1 The article is based upon my unpubl ished M.Phil. thesis ' Marx, Engels and the natura l sciences ' (1975, Univers i ty of Leeds).

2 E rns t Haeekel, Weltratzel (1899); t ranslated as 2~iddle of the universe (1929, London), 6.

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380 Ian Mitchell

these two is not only chronological but also personal, in that the leading materialists in the 18408 and 18508 became the most noted exponents of social Darwinism in the 18608 and 1870s. Our investigation must therefore begin by giving an account of the views of these men, naming them collectively, as did Engels, the ' vulgar ' materialists.

The philosophical views of the so-called 'vu lgar ' materialists Ludwig Biiehner, Karl Vogt and Jacob Moleschott, along with the political and social views that they deduced from them, is an as yet largely unexplored chapter in the history of science. Academic writers tend to talk nebulously about ' German materialism ' in the nineteenth century and leave it at that, while to Marxists these people are known only via the dismissive comments made by Engels, and later echoed by Lenin who said: ' Engels dissociated himself from the vulgar materialists Vogt, Btichner and Moleschott for the very reason . . . that they erred in believing that the brain secretes thought in the same way as the liver secretes bile ,.a But this lack of awareness of their views is not inevitable considering the tremendous popularity of their works in the nineteenth century and the widespread controversy these aroused.

Jacob Moleschott (1822 1893) studied medicine at Heidelberg, and was a Privatdozent there from 1847 to 1854: he was dismissed in the latter year, ostensibly for advocating cremation, but in reality for his radical materialism and involvement in the 1848-1849 Revolution. By this time his Kreislauf des Lebens (1852), a materialist attack on Liebig, had become notorious. This attack was motivated by Liebig's defence of ' vital force ' in organisms. During his life Moleschott studied the cardiac nervous system and the effect of light on metabolism, and published many works of popularisation. 4

Ludwig Btichner (1824-1899) graduated from Giessen and later studied under Virchow. He lectured on, and practised, medicine, but did not do any independent scientific work, remaining merely a populariser of scientific advance. Like the others of the trio, Biichner was active in 1848, and kept up a lively political career thereafter, being inter alia a German Delegate to the first (Lausanne) Congress of the International Workingmen's Association (I.W.M.A.) in 1867.~

Karl Vogt (1817-1895) was born in Giessen and studied first under Liebig, and later under Agassiz at Neufchatel. He was Professor of Zoology at Giessen in 1848 when the German revolution broke out. Participating in the radical wing of the revolutionary forces, he belonged to the rump of the National Assembly that was forcibly dissolved by Prussian Troops at Frankfurt, and he fled from Germany. In the 18508 he taught zoology at Geneva, and published works of popularisation such as Kghlerglaube und Wissenschaft (1855) as well as independent scientific works on geology, anthropology and physiology. 6

These men were not merely co-thinkers, but actual friends who had a high mutual regard. They continually refer to each other's work, and can with accuracy be termed a 'school ' of materialists. The ontological and epistemological views of the trio were direct and simple, and spread through the Germany of the 18408 and 18508 with hurricane force, forming part of the

3 V. I. Lenin, Materialism and empirio.criticism (1972, Peking), 40-41. 4 For Molesehot~, see C. C. Gillispie (ed.), Dictionary of Scientific Biography C1970- , New

York: Scribners), vol. 9, 456-457. 5 For :Biichner see DSB (footnote 4), vol. 3, 563-564. 8 There is a brief account of Vogt's life in his Lectures on man (1864, London), xi.

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Marxism and German Scientific Materialism 381

intellectual ferment that surrounded the German revolution9 Karl Vogt's Physiologische Briefe (1845-1847) had been the opening battle cry in German scientific materialism, and here he argued that all mental and spiritual processes were reducable to the laws of physics and chemistry9 In this work he stated that the secretion of thought by the brain was analogous to that of urine and bile by the bladder and kidneys, and this has earned him a rather dubious immortality. Vogt was followed by Biictmer, who accepted the basic reductionist approach to mental phenomena, seeking their explanation in terms of the only two categories that Biichner allowed in his Universe; matter and force. Indeed, Kraft und Stoff was the title of a work issued by Biichner in 1855. This catapulted him to fame in a Germany seeking scientific certainties after the political controversies of 1848-1850. Btichner was heavily influenced by such discoveries as that of the conservation of energy, and argued that only matter, with its intrinsic property of force, existed in the Universe. All dualism was rejected; for a monist approach, ' Thought, spirit, soul, are not material, not a substance, but the effect of the conjoint action of many materials endowed with forces or qualities ,.7 This force in matter is like the ' force ' of a steam engine, and matter's only essential property.

The ' vulgar ' materialists thought that sense-perception was the source of all knowledge, and that given an observer without prejudices, such sense- perception could reveal direct truths. In this context we can let Moleschott speak:

All facts, every observation of a flower, an insect or the detection of the characteristics of man, what else are they but relations of objects to our senses? 9 . . but then the wall is broken down between the thing as it is to us, and the thing in itself. Because an object is known only through its relation to other objects, for instance through its relation to the observer, all my knowledge is an objective lcnowledge, s

Of course, within this materialist scenario, there was no room for speculative thought, which was scorned as unscientific. Especially singled out as an object of wrath by the 'vu lgar ' materialists was the whole tradition of German philosophy. All had been students of Hegel's thought, and involved in the ' Young Hegelian ' movement of the 1840s in Germany, but all had equally strongly reacted against this movement. In his work of popularisation Der Mensch und seine Stellung in der Natur, Biichner summed up the outlook of this school of materialists towards German philosophy:

. . . properly-called speculative philosophy has, especially in Germany, exercised an influence prejudicial to free and true research9 This philosophy [is] accustomed to play with obscure or unclear words, with nonsense and special locution . . . the so-called dialectical method of these philosophers which dominated the first half of the century, does not burden us down any more. 9

F. C. C. L. :Biichner, Kraft u~d Stoff. Empirisch.naturphilosophisehe Studien. In allgemein- verstdndlieher Darstellung (1855, Frankfurt a. M.), 24; quoted in F. A. Lange, History of materialism and criticism of its present importance. . . (authorized translation by E. C. Thomas: 3 vols. in one, 1925, London), Book 2, 272.

s j . Molesehott, Kraislanfdes Lebens (1852, Mainz), 120; quoted in Lange (footnote 7), 277,279. 9 F. C. C. L. :Btichner, Der Menseh und seine Stellung in der Natur in Vergangenheit, Gegenwart

und Zukunf t . . . (2nd ed. 1872, Leipzig), 240. I have used the French translation of this edition, approved by Btichner himself, and the citation is from L'homme solon la science: son passe, son prdsent, son avenir . 9 . (1885, Paris), 277.

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382 Ian Mitchell

Their optimistic outlook stiffened the materialists against persecution, and lent an air of conviction to their utterances, whether on science or on social philosophy. Their nearest allies in the history of science would appear to be the Baconian tradition, and Soviet ' Marxist ' views on science. So influential were these men that all opponents of materialism, such as F. A. Lange or F. (Jberweg, concentrated their fire on the trio. 1~

Biichner, Vogt and Moleschott assumed that the correct method for social thinkers was scientism; and thus they were in the mainstream of nineteenth- century German thought. The scientistic outlook is based on the assumption that before attempting to build a social theory, a natural scientific understanding of the Universe is required. Once this has been achieved, one proceeds from science to society by way of analogy. That this outlook dominated the trio can be seen quite clearly in the structure of Btichner's Der Mensch und seine Stellung in der Natur, his most influential work of scientific popularisation and science-based political theory. The first section of the book establishes the animal origin of man, the second his non-vitalist bodily functioning, and the last develops on these bases, a scientific, humanist reformism.

The first inferences that they drew from their materialism echoed those drawn by the French materialists of the eighteenth century, and were anti- theological and anti-clerical. There was no room for a spiritual being in their Universe, and on earth the clergy were seen as allies of feudal reaction, especially in Germany. Biichner felt that ' . . . in the future science is destined to replace and render superfluous all forms of religion ,,11 while Moleschott denounced ' . . . priestly dread, the faithful ally of overweening tyranny ,.lu

The close ties between the Prussian state and clerical forces at this time obliged all radicals to attack religion. For the pious our trio's atheism was so synonymous with all evil, and the clerical forces in every area of greater Germany attacked them. For example, when Franz Ungor was attacked by the Wiener Kirchenzeitung in 1856, the worst epithet they could think of to throw at him was ' Der 6sterreichische Vogt-Bticimer-Moleschott ,.la

The publication in 1859 of Darwin's Origin of species was further fuel to their anti-theological fire. Significantly enough, Vogt had rejected evolution till this time, since it was tainted with the unscientific reek of Naturphilosophie. In addition, as a pupil of Agassiz, a celebrated opponent of evolution, he must have been aware that till Darwin's work, any real evidence for descent was lacking. In 1851 Vogt translated Chambers's Vestiges of creation, along with a preface to the effect that he coul4 not yet accept evolution on scientific grounds.

Biichner, of lesser scientific stature, simply swallowed all Chambers's fantasies. These included the idea that species could at a stroke give birth

10 See, for example, Lange's History of materialism (footnote 7); and F. Uberweg, Geschichte der Philosophic (1951, Berlin).

11 ~iichner (footnote 9), 270. 12 j . Moleschott, The chemistry of food and diet, with a chapter on food adulteration (1856,

London), 54. This is a translation of his Lehre der Nahrungsmittel. t~i~r das Voile (1850, Erlangen).

13 R. C. Olby, 'F rank Unger and the Wiener Kirchenzeitung ', .Folia Mendeliana, No. 2 (1967), 29-37 (p. 31).

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to the next link in the evolutionary chain. 14 Vogt's doubts evaporated when Darwin published his major work since evolution was now cleansed of Naturphilosophie, and placed on a scientific basis. From Darwinism Vogt drew clear anti-theological conclusions. In his Lectures on Man he stated with typical dryness: ' There is no doubt that Darwin's theory ignores a personal creator and his direct interference in the transformation and creation of species, there being no sphere of action for such a being ,.15 Indeed, so strong was Vogt's atheism and anti-clericalism that the editor of the English translation of 1864 felt obliged to politely dissociate himself from its harshness to calm his Victorian readers. Biichner also nurtured his anti-clericalism on Darwin's ideas, and on meeting Darwin shortly before his death informed him of this. Darwin dissociated himself from Btichnor's hastiness only, and not his conclusions. 1

But, if in the 1840s and 1850s Vogt and Biichner had been dominated by their atheism, their emphasis moved in the next two decades to biological metaphors of the social Darwinist type, and to these we now turn. Like so many others in the second half of the nineteenth century, they found a direct correlation between the Darwinian struggle for existence in nature, and the harsh turmoil of the rapidly developing industrial capitalism which was conquering the world. Originally an English doctrine expounded by Herbert Spencer, social Darwinism came to be the dominant social metaphor in Germany and the U.S.A. These societies were at this time undergoing the most massive industrialisation and rupture with traditional institutions, and Spencer's ideas found a ready audience. In the Germany of the later nineteenth-century social Darwinism held almost undisputed sway among natural scientists, iv In this movement the 'vu lgar ' materialists were to play a large part.

Biiclmer, for example, unequivically asserts that since man is an animal, the struggle for existence operates as much in human history and society, as in the natural world. He states that ' Thus . . . the struggle for existence, which we have already surveyed with all its vigour in the animal kingdom and backward civilisations, is transformed into competition between individuals and peoples to obtain the best, the most valued of earthly goods ,.is

However, Biichner's social Darwinism was of a very unusual sort, and foreshadows Fabian socialism. He advocated a policy of reforms to equalise the struggle for existence, which the concentration of wealth and privilege was nullifying. Among measures he favoured were the abolition of the right of inheritance, equal opportunities for women, and universal free education. For all these reasons Biichner was able to associate with the First Working Men's International of I867-1872. Btichner, nevertheless, was no socialist, and

14 For a discussion of the views of Vogt and Bi ichner at th is t ime, see the excel lent article by Oswei Temkin, ' The idea of descent in post-romant ic German biology ', in B. Glass (ed.), Forerunners of Darwin (1959, Balt imore), 323-355.

15 Vogt (footnote 6), 449. 16 This informat ion is given in the article by R. Colp (Jr.), 'Contacts between Marx and

Darwin ', Journal of the history of ideas, a5 (1974), 329-339. iv For social darwinism in the U.S.A., see 1~. Hofstadter , Social Darwinism in American

thought (1945, New York); and for Germany, D. Gasman, The scientific origins of National Socialism (1971, London).

18 L. Bi ichner (footnote 9), 206-207.

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384 Inn Mitchell

explained his aim as rather ' To equalise as much as possible the conditions in which all individuals fight for existence and struggle with their rivals . . . . In spite of appearances, all these measures have nothing to do with communism, since they embody nothing contrary to the principle of private property '.19 For the actual socialist agitation started in the 1860s in Germany by Ferdinand Lassalle, Btiehner had no sympathy. Instead he advocated the workers' self-help and co-operative schemes of the reformer Sehultze-Delitzsche. Btichner attacked Lassalle's German Workers Association, founded in 1863, as leading the workers into the paths of utopia and class conflict. Socialism, the aim of this movement, was scientifically impossible, due to the biological imperfections of man: ' The impossibility [of communism] stems in part from the general insurmountable antipathy of man for all these communist projects and in part from the real frailty, the real insufficiency of human nature, which necessitates long years of education to prepare for such a state of things ,.20 The working class was not the agent of Biiehner's reformist policy, but the State in alliance with the intelligent sections of the bourgeoisie. Only such an alliance aiming at reform could avoid social revolution with all its ' horrible and incalculable consequences ,.21

For Vogt, also, the ' struggle for existence ' was a biological and social fact: ' Man, even at the earliest period, applied his mind to multiplying the means with which nature had endowed him for the struggle of existence ,.23 Unlike the more sympathetic Btiehner, Vogt drew ruthlessly racist conclusions from Darwinism, asserting that Negroes were destined to remain eternally childlike and backward, and ridiculing as unscientific all conceptions of human equality. Nevertheless, he attacked slavery in the U.S.A. as preventing the negroes achieving even what little progress they were capable of.

Molesehott is in every respect the least sophisticated of these three: his 'vu lgar ' materialism borders on the obscene. To call him a biological reductionist is a misnomer. His reduetionism is crudely nutritional, and he asserts that the individual personality, nay the very character of each society, is the product of nutrition. In one of his works of popularisation, the Lehre der Nahrugsmittel (subtitled 'ftir das Volk '), he explains: 'The effects produced by food upon man determine the commerce and the character of the people, as well as the individual ,.~a

For Moleschott, the superiority of English industry was due to its labourers gorging themselves on roast beef while the Irish and Italians were lazy due to guzzling potatoes and pasta. He saw hunger as the motive force of social change, and advocated improving the diet of the poor, for example, by fight- ing food adulteration, to preserve the social fabric. In his view, 'Hunger desolates head and heart . . . for this reason hunger has caused more revol- utions than the ambition of dissatisfied subjects ,.24

For Molesehott the millenium of peace and liberty would result from a generally adequate diet for the masses. In future, science would banish

19 Ib id . , 225, 228. 20 Ib id . , 224-225. 21 Ib id . , 415. ~2 K. Vogt (footnote 6), 232. ~8 j . Moleschott (footnote 12), 68. ~4 Ib id . , 24.

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religion and hunger from the earth, as well as tyranny: ' . . . a rich blood produces, together with the muscles, the noble mind and the ardent courage of liberty. This is the association of thought that made Johannes von Miiller say that liberty thrives where cheese is prepared ,.e5 He even went so far as to claim that nutrition, and variations in it, was one of the main causes of evolutionary change: ' I no longer fear to give offence by designating food itself as one of the main causes of differences in our species ,.26 His scientific metaphor was metabolism, the chemical change of living matter, which he paralleled to human economic activity. This can be seen clearly in the following passage from the Kreislauf des Lebens: ' The name metabolism has been given to this exchange of material. We are right not to mention the word without a feeling of reverence. For just as trade is the soul of commerce, the eternal circulation of material is the soul of the world ,.e7

The widespread influence of the ' vulgar ' materialists made itself felt on such men as Liebig, Virchow, Haeckel, Ostwald and Helmholtz. According to Lilgo, it contributed to the ' idolatry of science ' in Germany after 1850, and helped to divorce science from the humanities, and elevate it to a branch of technology. 26

3. Historical and natural-scientific materialism

The way in which the materialism of Marx and Engels differed from that of such natural-scientific materialists as Vogt and Btichner can be best explained by examining their more developed critique of another German materialist, Ludwig Feuerbach, before turning to their views on the ' vulgar ' materialists themselves.

Feuerbach, who lived from 1804 to 1872, was a dominating influence on German philosophy in the 1840s, and both Marx and Engels came under his sway in the early years of that decade. Forty years later Engels testified to the effect that Feuerbach's ideas had had on the younger generation in Germany: ' One must himself have experienced the liberating effect of this book [the Essence of Christianity] to get an idea of it. Enthusiasm was general; we all became at once Feuerbachians ,.~9 To Marx and Engels, Feuorbach represented the humanistic, reforming element in German philosophy. His followers were styled the ' young ', or ' left ' Hegelians, as against the ' old ', or ' right ' Hegelians. The latter followed on their master's precepts, and this meant making an accommodation with the feudal and pietistic regime of Hohenzollern Prussia.

The school of Feuerbachians in Germany, who published and wrote in the Kdlnische Zeitung and the Rheinische Zeitung in the early 1840s, included Bauer, Strauss and Griin as well as Marx and Engels themselves. The ideas which inspired them were put forward by Feuerbach in the Essence of Christianity (1841) and the Philosophy of the future (1843). In these works he

25 Ibid., 63. 26 Ibid., 67. 2~ j . Moleschott, Der Kreislauf des Lebens. Physiologisehe Antworten auf Liebig's chemische

Briefe (1852, Mainz), 41. 2s On this, see the stimulating analysis of F. A. Lilge, Abuse of learning: the failure of German

universities (1948, New" York). 29 Friedrich Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy (1973,

Moscow), 20. A.S. 2C

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based himself on, and continued, the Biblical criticism of Strauss and others, and attacked religion as causing man's alienation from his real, human self. He wanted religion to be overthrown and replaced by an ethical humanism that placed human love on a pedestal (or an 'orgy of reconciliation ', as Engels later called it). Feuerbach was quite explicit in considering himself a materialist. As he stated in the 1843 'Preface' to the Essence of Christianity, ' I n the sphere of strictly theoretical philosophy, I attach myself in direct opposition to Hegelian philosophy, only to realism, to materialism . . . . I am nothing but a natural philosopher in the domain of mind ,.a0

Feuerbach was a cerebral Rabelasian, and his was a naturalistic humanism, that had as its basis the eating, drinking, loving individual man and his sensual relations to nature. He wanted to make these bodily functions the ' sacred ' basis of his humanism, as opposed to the alienated forms (the sacraments), in which these functions appeared in the Christian religion. Man for Feuerbach only existed through his sensual relations with the world, in fact he was these relations, and in his Philosophy of the future he coined the notorious phrase: 'Der Mensch ist was er isst' (Man is what he eats). The context of this phrase is: ' Human fare is the foundation of human culture and disposition. Do you want to improve a people? Then instead of preaching against sin, give them better food. Man is what he eats ,.al A more explicit account of his views on the sacred nature of the material bodily functions is given towards the end of his Essence of Christianity:

Water is the readiest means of making friends with Nature. The bath is a sort of chemical process, in which our individuality is resolved into the objective life of Nature. . . eating and drinking is itself a religious act: at least ought to be so . . . . And if thou art inclined to smile that I call eating and drinking religious acts . . . place thyself in a position where the daily act is unnaturally, violently interrupted. Hunger and thirst destroy, not only the physical, but also the mental and moral powers of man; they rob him of his humanity. 3~

The ' young ' Hegelians who followed Feuerbach called for the reform of society; more education, the ending of censorship, limiting the power of the churches, and constitutional reforms. They were, however, very vague about how all this was to be achieved. Impatient with their mildness, and with their fixation on the criticism of religion, Marx and Engels broke with them as they themselves began to move towards communism in 1843-1844, a path which the Feuerbachians could not contemplate. In a series of thick tomes, including the Holy family (1845) and the German ideology (1847), they settled accounts with this school and began to elaborate for the first time their new materialist philosophy of history. We are not here concerned with the criticisms that they made of the social and theological views of Feuerbach. Rather we must examine how they criticised his materialism, and differentiated their own from it.

a0 Ludwig Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity (1957, New York), xxxiv. al Ludwig Feuerbach, Sdmmtliche Werke (1O vols., 1903-1911, Stuttgart), vol. 2, 90; quoted

in J. H. Randall (Jr.), The career of philosophy (2 vols. 1965, New York), vol. 2, 376. ~2 L. A. Feuerbach (footnote 30), 276-278.

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Given the scientistic role assumed by Marxism in the Stalinist period, a reaction has set in against the idea that Marx was a material ist in an ontological sense. This widespread vogue finds expression in Schmidt 's The concept of nature in Marx; in a rather rhetorical vein he asks the question: ' How far is philosophical material ism presupposed by a theory according to which the manner of product ion and reproduction of man 's immediate life is the moment which in the last resort determines the historical movement of society? ,.33 Schmidt goes on to suggest that Marx did not make this presupposit ion, though Engels did. But it is in no way possible to deny that Marx was a materialist; that is, he affirmed that there existed an external world independent of the perceiving subject, and that this external world was the source of our perception and hence knowledge. Further, in the Holy family, he recognised this as a presupposition to socialism:

No great wisdom is required to discover the necessary connection of materialism with communism and socialism . . . . I f man constructs all his knowledge, perception, etc., from the world of sense, and from his experience in the world of sense, then it follows that it is a question of so arranging the empirical world that he experiences the truly human in it, that he becomes accustomed to experiencing himself as a human being, a4

But for Marx the question of mater ial ism in itself was an 'abst rac t ' question. To realise that the external world exists is only meaningful i f we also recognise that the way we structure and interpret our relationships with it depend, not primarily on natural or biological, but on social and historical factors. Our perceptions are historically conditioned, and we see the external world in their light. In addition, the source of ideas or thought is not the biological nature of man or the nature of the physical Universe. For Marx, ideas were not ' reflections ' of brute nature (physical or biological) but of social relations. That is, ideas rise from the complex of social relations thrown up by a certain mode of product ion and its historical development. For Marx, as for the Naturphilosophen, nature was not inert, but alive. However, for Marx it was ' a l ive ' historically (not spiritually). And therefore to speak about ' nature ' in the abstract and its relation to individual man was a fundamental ly wrong method.

The above viewpoint can be given some substance if we turn to the Theses on Feuerbach written by Marx early in 1845. In this work he criticises both Feuerbach's material ism and his lack of concern for political and social relations and their overthrow. The main critique given of Feuerbach is that his material ism posits individual man as passively receiving imprints from nature, not socialised man as act ively structuring these impressions in the light of his own human condition:

1. The chief defect of all hitherto existing mater ial ism--that of Feuerbach included--is that the thing [Gegenstand], reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object [Objekt] or of contemplation [Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively . . . .

sa A. Schmidt, The concept of nature in Marx {1971, London}, 20. 34 K. Marx and F. Engels, The holy family, in Marx-Engels Werke (hereafter ' MEW ': 39 vols.

1959-68, Berlin), vol. 2, 138.

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IX. The highest point attained by contemplative materialism, that is materialism that does not understand sensuousness as practical activity, is the contemplation of single individuals in ' civil society '.

X. The standpoint of the old materialism is' civil society '; the standpoint of the new is human society, or socialised humanity. 35

Thus Marx did not deny that the material world existed: he merely asserted that man does not structure it passively, but actively as a socially and historically conditioned subject. Thus he resolves the dichotomy between passive materialism and an active idealism9

Already in 1843 Marx had written to Rage of his dissatisfaction with the basis of Feuerbachian material ism: ' Feuerbach's aphorisms are unsatisfactory in my opinion only in this respect, that he refers too much to nature and too little to politics ,.a6 Later in German ideology he criticised the 'mere ly naturalistic, not historical and economic mater ial ism ' of Feuerbach, exposing his ahistorical concept of nature. The cherry tree outside the phi losopher's window was no nature-given growth, having been transplanted, and the food of the European poor was a historical, not a nature-given thing. He ridiculed Feuerbach's naturalistic material ism by point ing out that ' Hunger is hunger: but that hunger which satisfies itself with cooked meat, eaten with knife and fork, is quite another thing from that hunger which swallowed raw meat with the aid of hand, nail and tooth ,.aT

I t is clear, that for Marx, Feuerbach's mater ia l ism did not go beyond the l imitations of all ' hitherto existing material ism ', that is, did not rise beyond that of the French material ists of the eighteenth century. I t was basically a naturalistic, not an historical material ism, drawing its conclusions from natural or biological facts about man and nature. An adequate material ism had to include both nature and history, and socialised man who was a part of nature, otherwise it would be deficient. For Marx, history and not nature was the basis of social theory, and this has been well summed up by Korsch:

9 . . the scientific advances made by Marx's historical and social materialism, over the idealism of Hegel and the materialism of Feuerbach, consists in that he conceived o f ' matter ' itself in historical terms, while all his philosophical predecessors.. , had conceived of ' matter ' as a dumb, dead, or at the utmost, biologically animated nature on ly . . . Marx started from an altogether different viewpoint from the outset. Physical nature, according to him, does not enter directly into history. I t does so by indirection, i.e. as a process of material production which goes on, not only between man and nature, but at the same time between man and men . . . that ' pure ' nature which is presupposed to all human activity is replaced everywhere by a nature mediated and modified through human social activity . . . i.e. by nature as material production, as

These prel iminary points made, we are in a better position to understand the critique that Marx and Engels made of the natural scientific mater ial ism of Vogt, Btichner and Moleschott. In this we have to piece together scattered

3~ Karl Marx, ' Theses on Feuerbach ' (printed as an appendix to Engel (footnote 29)), 63, 65. ae Marx to Rage in MEW (footnote 34), vol. 27,417. aT K. Marx, ' Introduction to a critique of political economy ', ~VIEW (footnote 34), vol. 13, 624. as K. Korsch, Kar l Marx (1938, London), 190-191. Korsch's views on the materialism of

Marx have recently been subject to criticism by S. Timpanaro. In his On material ism (1976, London) the latter makes a forceful re-statement of the idea of a biological and natural-scientific basis for Marxism.

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remarks rather in the way that a paleontologist tries to construct a dinosaur from a tooth and a claw. Tooth and claw are possibly apt when we consider Engels's dismissal o f ' the unthinking mob s la Vogt ,,a9 or the ' caricature-like it inerant preachers Vogt, Biichner, etc.'. 4~ Their estimate of this school of scientific thinkers was not a high one.

For Marx, consciousness was an historical, not a biological or natural phenomenon. In the famous Preface to the critique of political economy he gives a succinct summary of the place of consciousness in historical materialism:

The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society . . . on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness . . . . I t is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary their social being that determines their consciousness. 41

Because of this approach, he could obviously have little sympathy for an outlook that regarded thought as a secretion of the brain, as did Vogt, or national characteristics as a product of nutrition, as did Moleschott. Thus we find, in a letter to Engels written after reading a work by Biichner, the comment:

The great Biichner has sent me his ' Six Lectures, etc., on the Darwinian theory, etc. ' . . . What especially amused me is the following passage dealing with the work of Cabanis (1789), ' You would almost think you were listening to Karl Vogt, when you read in Cabanis remarks like the following " thinking is to the brain, as digestion is to the stomach, or the secretion of bile out of the blood is to the liver, etc. " ' Biichner obviously believes that Cabanis has plagiarized K. Vogt . . . Ce sent des savants s~rieux! 42

Clearly Marx is not impressed by Btichner's scholarly talents, nor is he greatly impressed by Vogt's re-iteration of the formula of Cabanis, which he seems to thiIflr is pure plagiarism. Neither Marx nor Engels was competent enough in this area to make scientific criticisms of the theories of perception of the 'vu lgar ' materialists. Neither had apparently read Johannes yon Miiller's Handbook of physiology, which could have supplied them with a scientific basis for such a criticism.

Even without this Marx criticised Biichner's materialism in a letter to Kugelmann. He says that Biichner's ' superficial nonsense about the history of materialism is obviously copied from Lange. The way in which such a pigmy disposes, for example, of Aristot le--a materialist of quite a different brand from Biichner-- is truly astonishing ,.aa

Engels had other sticks with which to beat Vogt and followers. As early as 1859 he criticised the dominant mood of German science in the 1850s: ' . . . in which the speculative tendency never assumed any kind of importance

the new natural-scientific materialism [is] almost indistinguishable theoretically from that of the eighteenth century . . . . The . . . mode of thought of pre-Kantian times we find reproduced even to the most extreme triviality in

3~ F. Engels, Anti-Di~hring (1969, Moscow), 16. 4o Ibid., 393. 41 K. Marx, Preface to the Critique of political economy. Selected Works (2 vols. 1962, Moscow),

vol. 1, 363 (emphasis added). 4s Marx to Engels, 14 November 1868, in MEW (footnote 34), vol. 32, 203. 4a Marx to Kugelmann, in Letters to Kugelmann (n.d., London), 80.

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Biichner and Vogt ,.44 Further to this, Engels singles out for criticism the attitude of the ' vulgar ' materialists towards German philosophy. Biichner, as we recall, had savaged Hegelian dialectics and their harmful effect on science. In his fragment ' Btichner ', Engels puts his finger on one of his adversary's crimes. This is the ' . . . abuse directed at philosophy . . . which in spite of everything is the glory of Germany . . . Btichner is acquainted with philosophy only as a dogmatist ,.45 Then he gleefully examines a crucial point in Bfichner's text. Here the latter remarks that at a certain point nature in man becomes aware of itself, and man, from being the servant, becomes the master of nature. Engels cries: ' Whence this sudden Hegelianism? Transition to dialectics ,.46

Lack of dialectics was more than a methodological issue; for in preventing the German materialists from going beyond the mechanical materialism of ~he eighteenth century, it also prevented them going beyond the world outlook of the Enlightenment. This favoured the progressive reform of existing conditions. But now, the dialectics revealed in natural processes allowed materialists to go beyond this, and achieve an outlook on nature and society that dissolved all fixity. Hence, by extension, was undermined the fixity of existing political and economic conditions. Or as Engels saw it, ' But what is true of nature, which is hereby recognised as a historical process of development, is likewise true of the history of society in all its branches. . . 'Y

From the superior standpoint of a materialism that was dialectical, Engels felt confident enough to dismiss the German materialists in an unceremonious manner. When confronted with Feuerbaeh's estimation of them, Engels says:

Here Feuerbach lumps together the materialism that is a general world outlook resting upon a definite conception of the relation between matter and mind, and the specific form in which this world outlook was expressed at a definite stage, namely the eighteenth century. More than that, he lumps it with the shallow vulgarised form in which the materialism of the eighteenth century continues to exist in the heads of naturalists and physicians, the form in which it was preached on their tours in the fifties by Biichner, Vogt and Moleschott. 4s

Engels's dissociation of Feuerbach from materialism is significant. In general he criticised Feuerbach less than did Marx, and he clearly wished to imply that the last representative o f ' Classical German philosophy ' was in no way allied with contemporary German scientific materialism. But it is arguable that the trio of materialists, who had all studied Feuerbach, owed much to him in creating their own brand of materialism. They certainly recognised Feuerbach as a co-thinker and one of the sources of their inspiration. The German philosopher in turn regarded their work as a continuation of his own, and the similarity of his views with theirs is striking. Here Engels's polemical orientation rather obscures the real relationship between Feuerbach on the one hand and Vogt, Btichner and Moleschott on the other.

44 F. Engels, ' Kar l Marx: a contr ibut ion to the crit ique of political economy ', in (footnote 41), vol. 1, 371.

4~ F. Engels, Dialectics of nature (1972, Moscow), 202. 4e Ibid., 202. 4v F Engels (footnote 29), 47. 4s Ibld., 26.

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Like Fouerbach, these thinkers used their materialism for primarily anti- theological purposes. Engels clearly felt that the advances of science were of more merit than to be used simply as anti-religious propaganda: 'The vulgarizing pedlars who dealt in materialism in the Germany of the fifties, in no wise went beyond the limits of their teachers. All the advances made by natural science since then merely served them as fresh arguments against the belief in a creator of the universe ,.49

To deepen our understanding of Marx's and Engel's materialism, we must now consider their views on the writings of Joseph Dietzgen. The latter was a German leather worker by profession, and a lifelong Social Democrat, first in Germany, where he was born in 1828, and then in the U.S.A., where he died in 1888. Dietzgen was a self-taught philosopher, and from his pen there appeared in 1869 a work called The nature of human brainwork. This work displays many of the weaknesses of the autodidact, being repetitious and tending to bombast. 50 In spite of this, the work of this tanner showed many insights into the process of consciousness, and was highly regarded by both Marx and Engels. Marx, for example, wrote to Kugelmann when Dietzgen sent him the manuscript of his work: 'A fairly long time ago he sent me a fragment of a manuscript on the " faculty of thought " which in spite of a certain confusion and a too frequent repetition, contains much that is excellent and--as the independent product of a working man--admirable ,.51

Dietzgen based himself quite squarely on the materialist view of the world, and Marx's approval of him is further indirect evidence of the latter's materialist outlook. Dietzgen, for example, says: 'Every perception of the senses is based on some object . . . . The function of the brain is no more a " pure " process than the function of the eye, the scent of a flower, the heat of a stove, or the touch of a table ,.52 But for Dietzgen, adherence to materialism did not solve the question of the 'nature of human brainwork '. He asserted that the failure of philosophy, compared with the success of science in the nineteenth century, meant that thought processes themselves had now to be studied scientifically. Moreover, the scientific study of thought was a historical study, not a biological one. Ideas, philosophy, ethical conceptions evolve in history and suffer from social, historical and class limitations. On the basis of the recognition of the existence of the external world, Dietzgen--like Marx in the Theses on Feuerbach--asserted that our perception and structuring of this external world is relative to our position in history and society. Hence Dietzgen was able to distinguish his materialism from alternative varieties: ' . . . our materialism is a scientific, historical conquest. Just as definitely as we distinguish ourselves from the socialists of the past, so we distinguish ourselves from the old materialists. With the latter we have only this in common, that we acknowledge matter to be the premis, or prime basis of the idea ,.sa

49 F. Engels (footnote 45), 195. 50 On Dietzgen, see the article by Adam Buick, ' Joseph Dietzgen ', Radical philosophy,

10 (Spring 1975), 3-7. 51 Marx to Kugelmann, 5 December 1868, in MEW (footnote 34), vol. 32, 579. 53 j . Dietzgen, The positive outcome of philosophy. The nature of human brainwork (1906,

Chicago), 64. s3 j . Dietzgen, Kleinere philoeophische Schriften; eine Auswahl (1903 Stuttgart), 140; quoted

in Lenin (footnote 3), 291.

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Another element in Dietzgen's outlook that would have endeared him to Marx was his assertion that dialectical processes operated in the natural world, that ' Consciousness recognises that all nature, all being, lives in contradictions, that everything is what it is only in co-operation with its opposite ,.54 In The nature of human brainwor]c, Dietzgen discusses Btichner's Force and matter, repeating Engels's criticism of that writer's limited empiricism: 'Although the author of Force and matter chose for his motto " Now, what I want is- - facts " . . . materialism is not so coarse grained that it wants purely fac ts . . , science [wants] not so much facts as explanations, or an understanding of facts ,.55

On account of Dietzgen's views Engels was prepared to accord him much higher praise than the guarded welcome which Marx gave to his work. By 1886, when he came to write the text on Ludwig Feuerbaeh, Engels felt able to assert that Dietzgen had independently advanced the same basic world outlook as that of Engels himself; 'And this materialist dialectic, which for years has been our best working tool and our sharpest weapon, was, remarkably enough, discovered not only by us, but also independently of us and even of Hegel, by a German worker, Joseph Dietzgen ,.56

The piecing together of Marx's and Engels's reaction to Dietzgen, as well as to Feuerbach and to Vogt and Biichner themselves, gives support to the idea that for Marx a fruitful materialism had to include the historical process. And it also had to recognise the historical nature and limitations of human thought. Further, this starting point was what distinguished his materialism from a naturalistic or scientific materialism that set out to investigate the relations between an ' abstract ' nature and an ' abstracted ' man. At a t ime when the natural-scientific materialists were supremely popular in Germany, Marx directed an aside in Volume 1 of Capital at what he called ' abstract material ism '. The object of this thrust is not given, but there can be little doubt that it was aimed at the 'vu lgar ' materialists. He says that 'The abstract materialism of a natural science which excludes the historical process is defective, as we can see in a moment when we glance at the abstract and ideological conceptions voiced by its advocates whenever they venture beyond the bound of their own speciality ,.sv This is a telling critique of abstract materialism and a clear dissociation of historical materialism from it. Next we turn to the criticisms that Marx and Engels made of certain of the ' abstract and ideological conceptions ' deduced from this materialism by its practitioners.

4. The critique of scientism Hero we cannot enter into a discussion of Marx's and Engels's views on

Darwin's biological ideas, part enthusiastic and part critical. 5a Suffice it to say that their initial unbounded acclaim was soon modified by critical analysis of the concept of the ' struggle for existence '

54 j . Dietzgen (footnote 52), 79. 55 Ibid., 127. ae F. Engels (footnote 29), 44. ~ Karl Marx, Capital (1972, London), vol. 1,393. ~8 For an account of the evaluation of Darwin's scientific ideas made by Marx and Engels,

see chapter 8 of my thesis (footnote 1).

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The original enthusiasm of Marx and Engels for Darwinism in the early 1860s was further modified by the emergence of the social Darwinist movement, the most important science-based political trend in the nineteenth century. The conclusions drawn by Biichner and Vogt from Darwin's theories formed part of a larger intellectual movement. Outside the growth of the socialist movement itself, social Darwinism was probably the dominant social theory in the later nineteenth century. The genera] character of this movement, with its support for militarism and racialism, is well enough known to make an outline here unnecessary.

The general implications of the theory were not lost on radical thinkers. Later, those who were also scientists, like Peter Kropotkin, were to deal with it directly in works like Mutual aid (1902), which had a wide circulation in the workers' movement. Even at an early date, Marx and Engels, despite their many commitments, felt obligated to take potice of and warn their followers against social Darwinism.

The dominance of social Darwinism in Germany is shown by the fact that ~mt only 'vu lgar ' materialists adopted the ideology, but also those in the opposite camp. Here we refer to those involved in the nee-Kant ian anti- materialist revival in Germany which gathered pace from 1870. I t was on one of these, F. A. Lange, that Marx first concentrated his attention. Lange (1828-1875) was active in politics, commerce and academic life, becoming a Pr ivatdozont at Bonn and later Duisburg. His main work is a History of materialism (1865), which attacked this doctrine, especially as espoused by Vogt and Biichner, and put forward his own Kant ian position. Lange had a high regard for Marx personally as an economic scientist, and in the work cited he talks of Marx as ' Well known to be the most learned living historian of political economy ,.59 But Lange had no sympathy for socialism and, despite his philosophical opposition to Biichner, found himself on the same side of the fence politically. That is, he advocated reform to take the wind out of the socialist sails, since this unscientific ideology was threatening the social fabric. Lange's views are crystal clear:

But the socialists also favour materialism . . . . Revolution is with the extreme leaders of this party their only aim, and it is in the nature of circumstances that only extreme leaders are possible, because only extreme tendencies move the masses . . . . There is but one means to meet the alternative of this revolution . . . solely and entirely in the timely surmounting of materialism . . . . Ideas and sacrifice may yet save our civilisation, and transform the path that leads through desolating revolution into a path of beneficent reforms. 6o

In his later work Uber die Arbeiterfrage (1870) Lange attacked socialism as impossible from a social Darwinist standpoint, and argued that the struggle for life was a permanent feature of society which could only be mitigated, though not abolished, by the state. This work came into Marx's hand soon after publication, and he wrote to his friend Kugelmann of his impressions. For Marx, Lange was another bourgeois revolutionary of 1848, who had made

59 F. A. Lange (footnote 7), Book 1, 319. 60 Ibid., Book 3, 333-334.

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his peace with Imperial Germany and now was using his talents to attack the growing socialist movement. Thus he is scornful in his observations:

Herr Lange has made a great discovery. The whole of history is to be subsumed under one single great law of nature. This law of nature is the phrase ' struggle for life ', and the content of this phrase is the Malthusian theory of population, or rather the law of over-population. Thus instead of the ' st1-dggle for life ' as it presents itself for analysis historically in various specific social formations, we have nothing else to do than to translate each concrete struggle into this phrase, and to transform this phrase into the Malthusian 'population-fantasy'. You must admit that this is a very profitable method--for pompous, pseudo-scientific bombastic ignorance and intellectual laziness. 61

This quotation emphasises that for Marx the class struggle is not a ' biological ' fact, but a historically conditioned process, whose content changes with the development of social formations. Engels, too, was very quick to point out, not just the erroneous conclusions of the social Darwinists, but the flimsy basis of their method. Paul Lavrov, a Russian sociologist, had written to Engels in 1875, asking his opinion of Darwinism and its political repercussions. From Engels's reply, it can be seen that his view was markedly similar to that of Marx:

I accept of Darwin's teaching the development theory, but only adopt Darwin's method of demonstration (struggle for life, natural selection) as the first, provisional incomplete expression of a newly discovered fact . . . the whole Darwinian teaching about the struggle for life is simply the carrying over of Hobbes' teaching about bellum omnia contra omnes and the bourgeois economic doctrine of competition according to the Malthusian population theory, from society into animated nature. Once this slight of hand has been completed . . , then the same theory is taken back from organic nature again into history, and it is now asserted, its validity has been demonstrated as an eternal law of human society, e~

Those quotations can, I think, dispose of the idea that Marxism is merely a form of socialist Darwinism, as has been argued in a loose way by many writers. 6a They also show that even for the more natural-scientifically prone Engels, the class struggle was an historical and not a biological phenomenon.

Although in no way party to the vogue of building social theories on the basis of Darwin's ideas, the seriousness with which Engels took the growth of social Darwinist speculations can be seen by the fact that work on the Dialectics of nature was actually begun as a rebuttal of Biichner's Der Mensch and seine Stellung in der Natur. The fragment entitled ' Bfichner ' was the first of all the manuscripts to be written. Though it was to remain unfinished, from what is in the sketch we can discern the general outline of attack which Engels proposed to adopt. There is a clear indication of antiscientism when he talks of Biichner's ' presumption of applying theories about nature to society . . . [and] . . . claim to pronounce judgement on socialism and political economy

~i Marx to Kuge lmann, 26 June 1870, in MEW (footnote 34), vol. 32, 686. 6~ Engels to Lavrov, 17 November 1875, in MEW (footnote 34), vol. 34, 169-170. sa Here I have in mind such works as those by Gasman (footnote 17); E. H. Ackerknecht

Rudol f Virchow (1953, Madison); C. Zirkle Evolution, Marx ian biology and the social scene (1959, Phi ladelphia). For a crit icism of Zirkle, see pp. 97-98 of my thesis (footnote 1).

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on the basis of the struggle for existence ,.64 And further on in the Dialectics of nature he gives a concise summary of the divergence between historical materialism and social Darwinism: ' The conception of history as a series of class struggles is already much richer in content and deeper than merely reducing it to weakly distinguished phases of the " struggle for existence " ' 65

Engels kept abreast of developments in the German scientific community, and one of these caused him to plan another venture into scientific journalism. A bitter controversy had exploded over Darwinism in the years 1877-1878. In the former year, Rudolf Virchow had published an attack on Darwinism called Die Freiheit der Wissenschaft im modernen Staat. In this Virchow argued that the evolutionary theory--which he had earlier championed ~ led to the spread of socialism. To counteract this he advocated that the teaching of Darwinism be banned from schools.

An uproar followed Virchow's outburst, and the main rebuttal of his work came from Ernst Haeckel. The latter, like Virchow, was a firm opponent of socialism. But unlike Virchow, he felt that the implications of Darwin's ideas were profoundly anti-egalitarian and anti-socialistic. In his Freie Wissenschaft und freie Lehre, which appeared in 1878, Haeckel advocated the teaching of Darwinian theories as the surest antidote to the socialist menace. In this he was followed by Oskar Schmidt, who published Darwinismus und Social- demokratie in the same year. Though always squabbling over materialism, Kantianism and Darwinism, German scientists at this period showed a remarkable ability to unite against socialism! Engels followed this debate closely, and wrote to Sehmidt informing him that he intended to reply to the attacks on socialism made by the German social darwinists. Shortly after he wrote again to Lavrov with a similar message:

You will have seen that the German Darwinists, with their reply to Virchow's appeal definitely take the offensive against the party of socialism... Haeckel,whosepamphlet I have just received, limits himself therein to speaking in platitudes about the crazy teachings of socialism . . . . If the reactionary tendency in Germany is given a free run, then the Darwinists will be the first sacrifice after the socialists. Whatever happens to them, however, I regard it as my duty, to answer these gentlemen. 66

An actual refutation of Haeckel's specific form of social Darwinism was to have been integrated into the Dialectics of nature, as we can see from the outline plan left by Engels.

A point of interest revealed in the above quotation is that Engels clearly regarded the social Darwinists as being in the progressive camp in Germany, and he had a high regard for Haeckel himself as a scientist. Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was also an avid populariser of scientific advances. 67 In later life he founded the German Monist League, which was devoted to combatting both Christianity and socialism, seeking to replace them by a vitalistic religion akin to Nature worship. The activities of the League also lent support to German militarism and anti-semitism. These aspects of Haeckel's thought which anticipate Nazism are easy enough to discover with the wisdom of

s4 F. Engels (footnote 45), 202, 205. 6s Ib id . , 308. 66 Engels to Lavrov, 10 August 1878, in MEW (footnote 34), 337. 67 For Haeckel see Gasman (footnote 17); and DSB (footnote 4), vol. 6, 6-11.

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hindsight (as D. Gasman shows in The scientific origins of National Socialism), but at this time socialists regarded him as a progressive for his opposition to religion and to the out-dated political structure of Germany. But Engels in no way eulogised Haeckel. In addition to Engels's desire to attack Haeckel's political views, he criticised the way in which Haeckel defined materialism.

In his Anthropogenie, Haeckel had argued that the materialistic outlook saw matter as existing prior to force. Under the relevant excerpt from Haeckel's work Engels comments scornfully: ' Where does he get his materialism from? ,.68 But unfortunately, as was the case in the controversy with Bfichner, Vogt and Moleschott, pressure of work prevented Engels from making an extended, developed critique of the views of Haeckel. Nevertheless, despite the paucity of material from the pens of Marx and Engels, their ability to provide a methodological basis for a critique of social Darwinism is without any serious rival in nineteenth-century thought.

Further evidence of the ' non-scientistic ' orientation of Marx and Engels comes from another episode that is not without its humorous overtones, and concerns Marx's famous correspondent, the gynaecologist Ludwig Kugelmann. Kugelmann lived from 1828 to 1902, and joined the I.W.M.A. in Germany, entering into correspondence with Marx from 1862 onwards. Kugelmann was working in the 1860s with Rudolf Virchow, Haeckel's antagonist in the controversy over evolution in the German scientific community, which we have already mentioned.

Virchow enjoyed the reputation of being a major figure in nineteenth- century science. He was also among the founders of the German Progressive Party, and sat in the Reichstag from 1870 to 1893. He was active in social and sanitary reform, and generally was an opponent of Bismarck, being one of the few who did not capitulate to the growing militaristic and racialistic sentiments in German science and politics. After an initial enthusiasm for Darwinism, he reacted against evolution and took up an agnostic position, becoming an opponent of social Darwinist speculations. This was partly due to the support they gave to racialist ideas, but also because he felt that by sanctifying the idea of violent struggle, Darwinism lent support to socialism. In spite of a flirtation with socialism around the events of 1848, Virchow's scientific pursuits led him to adopt a scientifically deduced metaphor for social life that excluded class conflict.

Where Biichner sanctified capitalism via Darwinism, Virchow felt drawn to support a democratic state via his findings in biology. Ackerknecht has described very well how Virchow saw social life: ' His theory of cellular pathology was important to Virchow as it seemed to show objectively in the human body a situation he strove for and regarded as " natural " in society . . . . Cellular pathology showed the body to be a free state of equal individuals, a federation of cells, a democratic cell state. It showed it as a social unit composed of equals . . . ,.~9 Thus both social Darwinism and socialism disrupted this organic metaphor and were excluded. Virchow was forthright in his opposition to socialism. In the Reichstag in 1878 he said: ' The Social Democrat who purposively pursues his aims is our enemy . . . . We must be

68 F. Engels (footnote 45), 208. 6~ E. It. Ackerknecht (footnote 63), 45.

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independent of the government above and the masses below who threaten society . . . . Therefore I think we must look to the right for support among independent men . . . the good old German Biirgertum ,.70

In keeping with his liberal views, Virchow (and the Progressive Party) opposed Bismarck's legislation in 1878 outlawing the Social Democrats (the so-called Anti-SociMist Laws), and on occasion his party could unite for limited reforms with the socialists.

Despite his political deductions from science, and his prominence in political life in Germany, Virchow never aroused the anger of Marx and Engels. Since he was representative of the section of the German bourgeoisie who remained liberal after 1850, had no intention of trying to seek support among the workers, and opposed the persecution of the socialists, he could be safely left alone. Indeed, both Marx and Engels seem to have regarded him as a good, honest bourgeois democrat. He therefore lacked the qualities possessed by a Biichner or a Haeckel which would have necessitated a crossing of swords on the question of science and politics. The appearance of Capital in 1867 gave Kugelmann his chance to convert Virchow to a new metaphor. He presented the biologist with a copy of the work, and urged him to read it. Then he wrote to Marx about his intention of converting Virchow to communism: 'P.S. In making him aware of your work, I told him how you regard commodities as cells, [how you] analyse bourgeois society, etc., that you follow the same method in political economy as he does in medicine: that your Capital could therefore be dubbed the social pathology of bourgeois society, etc. ,.71 A particular episode from his medical co-operation with Virchow drove Kugelmann into raptures, as proof of his analogy. This was the removal of a tumour of the mucous membrane of the womb, and he wrote an article show- ing the similarity of this with the tasks of the workers' movement in society.

Marx appears to have been somewhat at a loss in replying, for he passed the letter on to Engels to deal with. The latter then wrote to Kugelmann, and his letter illuminates his negative attitude towards Kugelmann's metaphors on science and politics. The letter also reveals his attitude to Virchow: ' I was very interested by your removal of a womb-tumour by splitting and Press- schwamm/2 But the attempt by means of this tumour to convert Virchow to communism, seems very similar to a caesarian birth. Even if Virchow had knowledge and theoretical interests in politics or economics, this honest bourgeois is far too deeply committed ,.73 At any rate, Kugelmann's efforts to convert Virchow met with no success. As for Marx and Engels, they showed little further interest in the biologist.

5. The context of the dispute with the vulgar materialists I f we deal with the attack on the German materialists, and examine the

relevant texts out of any context, we could easily infer that Engels was

70 Quoted in G. Roth, The social democrats in Imperial Germany (1963, Ottawa), 144. 71 R. de Rosa, ' Rudolf Virchow und Karl Marx ', Virchows Archiv, 337 (1964), 593-595

(p. 595). 72 The use of this term in this sentence is obscure. The dictionary translation is ' compressed

sponge '. 7a Engels to Kugelmann, 11 April 1968; quoted in I4. de Rosa (footnote 71), and as yet

unpublished.

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398 Ian Mitchell

motivated by general philosophical considerations. But the matter is rather more complicated than that. The original decision of Engels to develop a critique of Biichner's materialism dates from 1873. 74 This led to the writing of the fragment ' Biichner ' which was found with the folder of the manuscripts of the Dialectics of nature after Engel's death.

Now, as is apparent, this is eighteen years after the appearance of Biichner's Kraft und Stoff, and almost thirty years after the publication of the first of Vogt's Physiologische Briefe. We are obliged to try to give an explanation for this time-lag in the critique of ' vulgar ' materialism. It is no easy way out to argue that before 1873 Marx and Engels were unaware of the existence of the ' vulgar ' materialists, for they had both read deeply in the popular works of this influential school in the 18508 and 18608. Neither can it be argued that Vogt and his coterie only moved into the field of political activity in the 18708. Evidence has already been given of their extensive political agitation from the early 1840s, and their involvement in the German Revolution of 1848-1849, where Vogt, in particular, played a role second to few in its importance. Neither Marx nor Engels was indifferent to Vogt prior to 1870, their letters of the 18508 and 18608 being full of disparaging references to him and his political activities. For Marx, Vogt symbolised the German bourgeoisie which had abandoned its mission of smashing feudal reaction in Germany. Instead, it was making its peace with autocracy and militarism, after the defeat of the 1848-1849 upheaval. Vogt, like so many others, was prepared to ally with Bismarckian reaction in order to unify Germany. His political views in another field actually caused him and Marx to cross swords directly.

In 1859 Vogt wrote a tract, advocating the unification of Italy by means of an invasion of the peninsula by the armed forces of Napoleon II I , the dictator of France. Marx wanted the Italian bourgeoisie itself to unite Italy, and put an end to reactionary political forces, and he rushed an attack on Vogt into print. This text, Herr Vogt, appeared in 1860 and is deservedly the least renowned of Marx's works. In it he pours vitriol on Vogt's politics and his integrity, arguing that he had become a paid agent of France (an accusation that was actually true). The edition printed of this work remained largely unsold, and it was never translated. To add injury to insult, Vogt sued all his defamers in court--including Marx--and won a nominal victory. 75

But what is really important to us in this rather sordid episode is that in this substantial work against Vogt, written when the latter was already renowned for his materialism, there is not a word from Marx about Vogt' s views on science, on materialism, or on any possible connection between these and his politics. The reason for this is that Vogt had not yet attacked socialism from a scientific standpoint. It is revealing to compare the reaction to Btichner with that towards Vogt. Marx had crossed swords with the latter, but had in the 1860s apparently quite amicable contacts with Btichner. Btichner was an advocate of progressive reform, and was one of the German delegates to the first Lausanne Congress of the International Working Men's Association in 1867. This organisation was a grouping of trades unions, socialist clubs and co-operatives

~a Here as elsewhere, the dating of fragments is from the notes to the Moscow 1972 edition (footnote 45).

75 For an account of the Vogt affair, see Otto l~tihle, Kar l Marx: his lifs and work (1929, London), 215-219.

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from several countries. Marx actually wrote its statutes and many of its publications, and played a prominent part in it throughout.

Marx evidently thought highly enough of Btichner to write to him as late as 1867, asking if he knew of a French publisher for the first volume of Das Kapital, which had just appeared. He added that he was aware that Biichner himself had managed to get Kraft und Stoff published in France. 76 From this letter grew up a sporadic exchange of correspondence and literature, Marx receiving and reading several works by Biichner in the later 1860s. The letters already cited show that Marx formed an opinion of Btichner as a plagiariser and journalistic writer on science.

But these cursory references soon became inadequate to deal with Biichner. In 1871, there erupted the Commune of Paris, and Marx sprang tc its defence in the name of the International. The bloody suppression of the Commune led to the disintegration of the International (which received much of the blame for the uprising), and to the flight of many liberal bourgeois from the workers' movement. In this respect we can only say of Biichner that, while he was still in the International in 1870, he had left it by 1872. Henceforth, he began writing social Darwinist tracts against the socialist movement. The first, his magnum opus, dates from 1872, and his last, Darwinismus und Socialismus, from 1894. I t seems justified to infer that the Commune was Btichner's watershed with the labour movement.

It is from this point in time that Engels planned an extended attack on the materialism of Biichner. As already noted, Engels's fragment ' Biichner ' was a sketch of a reply to the latter's Der Mensch und seine Stellung in der Natur, and many of the early fragments were collected with the aim of a com- prehensive reply in mind. Henceforth, every casual reference to materialism in Engels's writing contains the obligatory dismissal of Vogt and Biichner with the appropriate epithets, and the dissociation of the materialism of Marx and Engels from theirs. It is clear, moreover, that Engels had no great intellectual wish to deal with Btichner. In the Dialectics of nature he says that had the 'vu lgar ' materialists not attacked socialism and German philosophy 'One could let them alone and leave them to their not unpraiseworthy, if narrow occupation of teaching atheism to the German philistine ,.TT But, the fact that they had committed such crimes necessitated a reply.

6. Conclusion Despite the undeveloped nature of many of the arguments advanced by

Marx and Engels against the German scientists we have considered, and the fact that what exists does so in manuscript or polemical form, we are nevertheless in a position to answer the questions raised at the beginning of the article.

Though Marx and Engels were undeniably materialists, they sharply distinguished their own materialism from that prevailing in contemporary scientific circles. The fundamental outlook of these two men regarding the relationship of science to politics was non-reductionist and non-scientistic. Unlike the bulk of nineteenth-century scientists, and unlike many political writers of the period, they did not feel that it was man's biological make-up

re The letter is in MEW (footnote 34), vol. 31, 544-545. ~ F. Engels (footnote 45), 202.

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400 Marxism and German Scientific Materialism

that determined the structure of the society that he was forced to live in, or that analogies of a political nature from the models of natural science carried any political categorical imperatives. The raw material of their socialism was economics and history, but a history conceived of as a differentiated unity with the material world. The scientific basis of Marxism is not demonstrated by the number of natural scientific references, or analogies its founders inserted into their works. Rather their approach to history, by basing it on a science (political economy), and by treating it in a scientific (that is, dialectical and theoretical) manner, rendered their socialism 'scientific '.

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Ian Mitchell 1978 Marxism and German Scientific Materialism Annals of Science 15 4 379-400

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Transcript of Ian Mitchell 1978 Marxism and German Scientific Materialism Annals of Science 15 4 379-400