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Marxism and German scientificmaterialismIan Mitchell aa
Clydebank Technical College , Kilbowie Road, Clydebank,
ScotlandPublished online: 22 Aug 2006.
To cite this article: Ian Mitchell (1978) Marxism and German
scientific materialism, Annals of Science,35:4, 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 philo- sophical 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 under- standing 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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Marxism and German Scientific Materialism 383
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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Marxism and German Scientific Materialism 385
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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386 Ian Mitchell
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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Marxism and German Scientific Materialism 387
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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388 Ian Mitchell
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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Marxism and German Scientific Materialism 389
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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390 Ian Mitchell
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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Marxism and German Scientific Materialism 391
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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392 Ian Mitchell
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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Marxism and German Scientific Materialism 393
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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394 Ian Mitchell
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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Marxism and German Scientific Materialism 395
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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396 Ian Mitchell
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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Marxism and German Scientific Materialism 397
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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Marxism and German Scientific Materialism 399
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 never- theless 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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