CONTENTS
The Art of Science, and the Science of Art
It is doubtless true that those who approach Marxist
literature for the first time encounter the proverbial six shredded wheat. More
often than not it is because the approach itself is misguided. In any case, let
us see if Marxist literature is really such hard going.
Below I give some examples of great Marxist writing. Let
us evaluate it as art rather than political science. Actually, the first quotes
are from Hegel, the German philosopher who provided the spark that set Marx and
Engels going, and the quotes come from Hegel’s Science of Logic,
in the section entitled The Doctrine of Being.
"Being,
pure being, without any further determination. In its indeterminate
immediacy it is equal only to itself. It is also not unequal relative to
another; it has no diversity within itself nor any with a reference outwards. It
would not be held fast in its purity if it contained any determination or
content which could be distinguished in it or by which it could be distinguished
from an other. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness. There is nothing
to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only
this pure intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or
it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate, is
in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than
nothing"
There is a strangely compelling rhythm to this, and
the symmetry is faultless. It reads like some strange form of poetry. Here is
the following paragraph:-
"Nothing, pure nothing: It is
simply equality with itself, complete emptiness, absence of all determination
and content- undifferentiatedness in itself. In so far as intuiting or thinking
can be mentioned here, it counts as a distinction whether something or
nothing is intuited or thought. To intuit or think nothing has,
therefore, a meaning; both are distinguished and thus nothing is (exits)
in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is empty intuiting and thought
itself, and the same empty intuition or thought as pure being. Nothing is,
therefore, the same determination, or rather absence of determination, and thus
altogether the same as pure being."
Once again we have the same perfect symmetry, but now we
perceive something astonishing. The second paragraph is a mirror image of the
first, so that the two taken together as a whole are symmetrical. They form a
symmetrical whole of symmetrical parts. The next paragraph adds to the
fascination:-
"Pure being and pure nothing
are, therefore, the same. What is the truth is neither being nor nothing,
but that being – does not pass over but has passed over- into nothing, and
nothing into being. But it is equally true that they are not undistinguished
from each other, that, on the contrary, they are not the same, that they are
absolutely distinct, and yet are unseparated and inseparable and that each
immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is, therefore,
this movement of immediate vanishing of the one in the other: Becoming,
a movement in which both are distinguished, but by a difference which
has equally immediately resolved itself."
The separate contents of the first two paragraphs are
now brought into a unity, but not a still, lifeless unity. Their unity consists
in their motion and life, in the fact that they share a common fate. Instead of
stillness and death we have all the colour and richness of life. There’s
mountains more of this in Hegel.
Continuing our quest for great art rather than great
science, let us find something more exciting. For excitement the best place to
go is Lenin. The following is taken from What is to be Done?,
written during the period when Lenin, against much opposition, was preparing the
Bolsheviks for the revolution of 1917.
"We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous
and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on
all sides by enemies, and we have to advance under their almost constant fire.
We have combined voluntarily, precisely for the purpose of fighting the enemy,
and not to retreat into the adjacent marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the
outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive
group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of
conciliation. And now several among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the
marsh! And when we shame them they retort; how conservative you are! Are you not
ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes,
gentlemen! You are not only free to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you
will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper
place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let
go of our hands, and don’t clutch at us and don’t besmirch the grand word
freedom, for we too are free to go wherever we please, free to fight not only
against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!"
The most colourful of all
the great Marxist writers was Trotsky. This is from his brilliant History of
the Russian Revolution, and he is speaking of the peasants revolutionary
struggle to free themselves from serfdom.
"Complaints
came in from Moscow, Nizhegorod, Petrograd, Oral, and Volyn provinces – from all
corners of the country – about the destruction of the forests and seizure of
reserves of corded wood. ‘The peasants are arbitrarily and ruthlessly cutting
down the forest. Two hundred dessiatins of the landlords forest have been burned
by the peasants’. ‘The peasants of Klimovichevsky and Cherikovsky counties are
destroying the forests and laying waste to the winter wheat.’ The forest guards
are in flight; the landlords’ forests are groaning; the chips are flying
throughout the whole country. All that autumn the muzhiks axe was feverishly
beating time to the revolution."
The imagery is superb. The guards are in flight – the
state is disintegrating. The forests are groaning, as trees do just before they
fall – the old society is about to come crashing down. The revolutionary upsurge
of the workers in the cities proceeds in waves to which the peasants'
revolutionary axe beats
time. Powerful stuff.
Marxism is of course a science, and writing is an art,
hence Marxist literature is a synthesis of both. As a matter of fact art and
science are in any case two sides of a coin, and this explains something rather
curious about the above quotes from Hegel. How is it that, although the original
was written in German, it retains its perfect symmetry in the English language?
The answer is to be found not in the art but in the science. It is the
scientific nature of the logical reasoning which imparts the symmetry to the
text, and makes it possible for a skilled translator to retain the symmetry in
any other language. The accomplished artistry of the great Marxist writers has
been an important factor in the exposition of the science.
So far we have considered
science as art. Now let us see how art is also science. In his lyrical drama,
Prometheus Unbound, P.B. Shelly expresses the Marxist scientific prognosis
concerning the future of human society in incomparable artistic form.
Prometheus, the champion of mankind, is chained to a rock and subjected to
perpetual torture by the tyrant Jupiter. Demogorgan, the primal power of the
world, drives Jupitor from his thrown and releases Prometheus, undoubtedly a
revolutionary thing to do. There follows the reign of love, when “thrones,
alters, judgment-seats and prisons” are things of the past and “Man remains ...
Sceptreless, free,
uncircumscribed, but man,
Equal, unclassed, tribeless,
and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship,
degree, the king
Over himself; just, gentle,
wise, but man.”
This deeply moving lyricism
expresses perfectly the future communist classless society in which the state
will have withered away. It is thoroughly materialist, or at least humanist,
since Shelly takes man as first principle as did Feuerbach. Moreover, Shelly’s
reference to “free, uncircumscribed man” faithfully echoes Hegel’s understanding
of freedom, that which is “unlimited by an other”, self-determined, infinite.
This beautiful work was
published in 1820, more than twenty years before Marx and Engels put pen to
paper.
Terry Button
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