Lichtheim is an absolute monster of a scholar: he is brief, he is thorough, and he is very judgmental. He leaves practically nobody off freely in thisLichtheim is an absolute monster of a scholar: he is brief, he is thorough, and he is very judgmental. He leaves practically nobody off freely in this history of Marxist thought, from Marx himself & his own difficulty solving the value-price transformation to the abortion of CCCP "philosophy" in the heyday of the Soviet Union. That said, he knows what he's doing: he can succinctly explain Hegel, for one impressive feat of writing, and consistently demonstrates mastery of the whole of Marx's thought and method across politics, sociology, economics, and history, as well as the subject's even vaster secondary literature.
The book's subtitle is An Historical and Critical Study, and those two subjects indeed not only form the nexus of Lichtheim's approach but constitute the fundamental aspects of Marxism. Lichtheim interprets the young Marx's writings as a critical theory of society above and before being a science of history or economics (yes, you should keep in mind that Lichtheim considered himself a Critical Theorist). This is significant in that it ameliorates the dated aspects of Marx's work: he was critiquing the society of his era with the assumption that a revolution was coming that would change the world. This proceeds dialectically: the theorists critique society & point the revolution at particular problems, the mass of revolutionaries do their thing & reshape society, theorists critique *that* new society and try to point the next revolution in the right direction to get rid of the newly-uncovered dangers, and so on. Historically, Lichtheim argues that Marx's critical theory did quite a good job: his early work emphasized securing democracy, the revolutions that swept Europe in 1848 occurred just after the publication of The Communist Manifesto, and these revolutions indeed were to a degree shaped by his critical theory & brought democracy to large swatches of Europe. Obviously, they didn't lead to communism, but that's not necessarily a falsification of Marx's theory, as we find out.
Lichtheim interprets young Marx as essentially a theorist of human freedom: Men have control over the world, but only to the degree that they have control over themselves. If your life and environment is not under your own control, you do not have free will and you are not free. Free will & genuine human freedom only exists if humans genuinely have power over what they do and what their environment is like; "making man sovereign over his circumstances," in Lichtheim's words (p. 237). Critical thought is only validated insofar as it is coupled to revolutionary action in the same period. This is a far cry from the later epistemology of Engels, Kautsky, Plekhanov, Lenin, and so on, where Marxism is Darwinized and treated as a science which objectively reveals the truth of the world in the past, present, and future; these men were practicing a science, not a theory, and considered it essentially historically-complete. 'Scientific socialism' apprehends the world in its entirety rather than merely the parts that affect humans and their society; it discovered that communism is historically-guaranteed rather than just possible; it has already predicted and divined the revolution & its goals before there is the slightest sign of any revolution. Although Marxist-Leninists today deride 'unscientific,' 'utopian,' and 'idealist' thinking, the young Marx found that "there are no 'ideals' that cannot be realised, for the emergence of new aims is itself an index to the presence of forces which make for their realisation" (p. 239).
Keeping to his own prescriptions, Lichtheim's own critiques of Marxism & its later descendants are themselves rather dated, a product of this book's being published in 1961. He indulges heavily in the notion of totalitarianism when critiquing official CCCP ideology & comparing it to Lukacs & Gramsci, a concept which has gone out of style today. Similarly, his interpretation of the shortcomings in Marx's economics are very much the product of a pre-neoliberal world: in 2019, the bourgeoisie have found new sources of finance that Lichtheim glosses over, and have reverted to a more classically-ruthless increasing rate exploitation that they evidently hadn't found necessary during the Cold War. That being said, Lichtheim is adamant that the conservative and bourgeois critiques of Marx (again, minus the price-value transformation, which he thinks Marx left fragmentary & unclear in Capital, Vol. 3: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole) have very little merit: the pauperization of the working class is neither necessary nor guaranteed by Marx, his mature critique of political economy probably shouldn't let bourgeois economists derive prices since he's interested in making that Not A Thing, and if one is interested in explaining how capitalism begins & then sociologically functions, his critique still works even if you reject the labor theory of value (which Lichtheim views as a handicap of sorts that Marx is saddled with because of his position in the tradition of classical political economy & his necessary use of Ricardo, Smith, & so on).
After the critique of Marxian economics, Lichtheim observes Marx's successors & their eventual total abandonment of critical theory & its union with revolutionary practice. He has lots to say about pretty much every important Marxist from Marx's death to 1917; he's positive towards some (like Hilferding & Sweezy), partly-approving-with-the-caveat-that-they-were-definitely-wrong-about-X-Y-and-Z (like Luxemburg), and very negative towards some (he really doesn't like Lenin, whom he sees as barely even a Marxist). These are all of course carefully historically-situated & then critiqued in the light of history, like he does throughout the book; such chapters are useful to scholars because they attempt to answer where, when, and why the unique Marxian synthesis dissolved. He then concludes the book by looking at the sorry state of affairs in the 60s, wondering whether we can properly be said to still live in a class society (with as clear, accurate, and sufficient a definition of what class means in Marx's terms as any you'll find), and reaffirming the necessity of critique. The triumph of Lenin & the modern cold war can be fairly said to have demolished the world of Marx, just as Marx was aiming to do, but hasn't (yet) produced anything resembling communism. Does this prove Marx was wrong? Not at all: it shows he saw just what mattered most.
"In the sunset of the liberal era, of which Marxism is at once the critique and the theoretical reflection, this outcome confirms the truth of its own insights into the logic of history; while transferring to an uncertain future the ancient vision of a world set free." (p. 406, the book's final sentence)
To a certain degree, history lets us see that Lichtheim falls prey to his own critical method: the book was critical theory meant specifically for use in 1961, & his reading of what's still useful or true about Marx is colored both by the circumstances of that period and his own tendentious spats with Soviet Marxists and bourgeois economists. Nevertheless, the history is thoughtful & fair and his argument for Marxism as a critical theory rather than a science is logical and compelling. As we know, history does not proceed linearly; Lichtheim would be all too happy to learn that Marx is even more relevant & accurate now than he was in his own time....more
Lichtheim’s a beast. He actually sort of apprehends neoliberalism coming as one possibility (this book was published in 1972, the year before neoliberLichtheim’s a beast. He actually sort of apprehends neoliberalism coming as one possibility (this book was published in 1972, the year before neoliberalism’s inaugural oil crisis), although he was more sure of the Russian and American models fusing into a technocratic, planned, mixed economy. He covers just about everything you could want—the development of science, art, literature, sociology, history, philosophy, all with a reckless will to criticize that contemporary scholarship rarely demonstrates itself capable of attaining. He knows how to use dialectical logic perhaps better than any Marxist or philosopher I’ve ever read (really. He can explain Hegel). The book has a ton of value. The failed predictions, the careful interpretations, the vicious polemics, it’s a astounding work. Perhaps its most interesting aspect is the critique of universal history Lichtheim offers, where he compares the Marxist theory of history to other macro-scale historians like Spengler and Toynbee. The only mark I’d put against it is his interpretation of Nietzsche, whom he basically reads just like the Nazis did. ...more
The imperialism section was my favorite part. Hannah’s explanation of the perpetual motion of a totalitarian *movement* and how it fundamentally makesThe imperialism section was my favorite part. Hannah’s explanation of the perpetual motion of a totalitarian *movement* and how it fundamentally makes the state different from normal dictatorships or democracies was impressively thoughtful, as is her (very credible) assertion that leader statements of fact, seeming lies, are essentially just coded statements of intent. I don’t think I agree with her definition of “ideology,” but her ruminations of the logic of ‘ideologies’ and the conditions needed to bring out the worst possible conclusions of them were extremely impressive. The book was long and hard and I’m glad I read it....more
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