Ru
Rubel, Maximilien (1905-1996)
French sociologist, Marxist humanist and with T.B. Bottomore, a prolific publisher and translator.
Rubel began the study of the works of Marx during the German occupation of France. In 1948, Rubel enunciated his ethical interpretation of Marx: “the value of Marx at the present time is not so much as a scientific, therefore relative and debateable, economic theory, but more in the validity of his ethics and his radical critique of social institutions that prevent the full and free development of every individual, and consequently, of humanity.” According to Rubel, Marx had not become a revolutionary and a socialist by discovering the laws of the capitalist development, but was successful in identifying the essentially revolutionary dynamics of capitalism — capitalism is forced to bring to light a vision of a social organization that it must nevertheless suppress. In Marx, he wrote, two elements must be distinguished: the scientific analysis of the social relations of production within social economic formations, and the conception of Man, the agent of the history which refuses to be dominated. He dedicated himself to his role as a student of Marxism, which he understood as a return to an authentic Marx freed from the interpretation of Marxists. Rubel was a critic of “really existing Socialism,” judging their ideological superstructure to represent the false consciousness of the bureaucratic caste that had approriated from the proletariat the role of its representative.
Ruge, Arnold (1802 - 1880)
Arnold Ruge
Young Hegelian. Editor of Hallische Jahrbücher, then published Marx's first really comprehensive political treatise. With Marx, Feuerbach, and Bakunin, founded the newspaper Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. Broke with Marx in quarrel over Herwegh.
Rühle, Otto (1874-1943)
German Left Communist. Joined German Social Democratic Party in 1900 and voted with Karl Liebknecht against the war credits in the Reichstag in 1915 and was a member of the Spartakus Group until 1917.
He did not join the USPD. He was a leader of the IKD (International Communists of Germany) in Dresden and the founding Chairman of the Dresden Workers and Soldiers Council and a delegate to the founding congress of the German Communist Party (KPD). He was among those who split to the left in 1919.
In 1937, Rühle served on the Dewey Commission to investigate the charges made against Trotsky in the Moscow Trials.
See Otto Rühle Archive.
Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
British philosopher and populariser and historian of philosophy, mathematician (leading exponent of Logicism), pacifist (jailed for 6 months in 1918 anticonscription campaign) and Fabian socialist; leader of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, co-organiser of International War Crimes Tribunal convened in 1966 to focus opposition to US war in Vietnam.
Russell is easily the most famous and widely read British philosopher of this century, a member of the British Peerage, he was a consistent fabian/pacifist critic who was a frequent figurehead for broad left campaigns, and an exceptionally prolific writer and pamphleteer.
His first major work was the 1903 Principia Mathematica, later expanded in a 3-volume work written jointly with Alan Whitehead, which endeavoured to prove that the whole of mathematics could be derived from a set of axioms drawing exclusively on the principles of logic. This conception gave to mathematics a kind of Platonic status. Russell was the only figure to recognise the value of Gottlob Frege's system of Logic which was developed with the same objective. However, later developments proved that the Logicist thesis was untenable.
In his 1912 Problems of Philosophy Russell argued for a position which he called Realism, by which he meant that not only objects, but Universals, are “real”, that is exist like matter independently of consciousness. For Russell, this thesis was the only explanation for a priori knowledge: these universals exist, and the mind is capable of perceiving them through reason. However, in his later Philosophy of Logical Atomism, Russell modified his position, holding that what existed objectively were only “logical atoms” – relations, properties, etc.
In Problems of Philosophy Russell presents a systematic account of almost all of the main problems of epistemology, one of very many popular and comprehensive works that he produced over a lifetime of prolific writing. Russell was not always completely honest and objective in his writing though, and his great authority and wide readership meant that where there were inaccuracies in his work, these had a profound impact; one of these worthy of mention is his malicious misinterpretation of Hegel, which helped marginalise Hegel among English-speaking readers for a long time.
See his 1911 Philosophical Importance of Mathematical Logic and his contribution for the 1926 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica on the Theory of Knowledge.