This book, written to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Karl Marx, offers an interpretation of the activity and thought of one of the outstanding thinkers of the nineteenth century. It is written in the hope that it may clarify some of the fundamental problems and issues of Marx’s philosophy around which controversy has raged for decades. To those who are already acquainted with the writings of Marx and his followers, it is hoped that this book will suggest a fresh point of view. To those who are not acquainted with Marx, it is offered as a guide to further study.

The occasion for which this book has been written and the unhomogeneous nature of the reading public to which it is addressed have determined the content and method of its presentation, and have compelled the author to forgo a systematic historical exposition and a detailed critical analysis of the themes treated. These will be given in subsequent studies. But it is hoped that Marx’s leading ideas have been here presented with sufficient clarity to produce a lively appreciation of their meaning and impact in the world today. If in addition the reader is led to independent reflection upon the material submitted and the point of view from which it has been interpreted in the following pages, the objectives of the author will have been attained.

Experience has shown that no book on Marx can expect to be received with anywhere near the same detachment as a book on the Ammassalik Eskimo or a treatise on the internal constitution of the stars. Marx’s ideas are so much a part of what people fear or welcome today, his doctrines so intimately connected with the living faith and hate of different classes and so often invoked by groups with conflicting political allegiances that the very sight of his name arouses a mind-set on the part of the reader of which he is largely unconscious. Every critical student of Marx – as of any disputed text or epoch – must, however, make the effort to distinguish between the meaning disclosed by analysis and his own evaluation of that meaning. Such an effort in Marx’s case is singularly difficult, for even when we become aware of our prejudices we do not thereby transcend them; but it is an effort which must be made if we would do justice to both Marx and ourselves.

In order to facilitate this process of discrimination, the author believes it may be helpful to state explicitly certain methodological cautions that are generally taken for granted in subjects less heatedly controversial. He also hopes that by making his own position clear at the outset, much misunderstanding will be avoided.

This book is not written by an ‘orthodox’ Marxist. Indeed the author regards orthodox Marxism, in the form in which it flourished from 1895 to 1917, as an emasculation of Marx’s thought. He holds that Marx himself was not an orthodox Marxist. Orthodoxy is not only fatal to honest thinking; it involves the abandonment of the revolutionary standpoint which was central to Marx’s life and thought. This has been amply demonstrated by the historic experience of the German Social-Democracy, the leaders of whose centre and right wing regarded themselves as orthodox Marxists par excellence, and who were quick with the epithet of heretic against all who sought to interpret Marxism as a philosophy of action.

The very use of the term ‘orthodoxy’ is an anomaly in any revolutionary movement. Its derivation is notoriously religious. Its meaning was fashioned in the controversies between Roman and Byzantine Christianity. Its associations more naturally suggest a church and the vested privileges of a church than an organisation of enlightened and disciplined men and women fighting for the emancipation of society. Wherever there are people who insist upon calling themselves orthodox, there will be found dogma; and wherever dogma, substitution of a blind faith or a general formula for concrete analysis and specific action.

One cannot be orthodox at any price and a lover of the truth at the same time. This was clearly demonstrated by the tenacity with which ‘orthodox’ Marxists, who in practice had long abandoned Marx and Engels, clung to the latter’s anthropology in the face of the most conclusive findings of modern anthropologists. If the acceptance of Morgan’s outmoded anthropology is necessary to orthodox Marxism, the author must be damned as an heretic on this point as well. Morgan was a great pioneer anthropologist. But no one today can accept his universal schema of social development for the family and other institutions, without intellectual stultification.

This book is not an attempt to revise Marx or to bring him up to date. Such a procedure is impermissible in what presumes to be a critical, expository account of Marx’s own theories. The fact that the neglected aspects of Marx’s thought, to which this book calls attention, have impressive contemporary implications, explains, perhaps, why this study was undertaken, but it does not constitute an introduction of a foreign point of view into the doctrines discussed.

No author can guard himself from the will to misunderstand. But he can diminish the dangers of distortion by inviting the reader to follow the argument in its own terms and to judge it in the context of the views opposed. The emphasis upon the role of activity in Marxism, as contrasted with the mechanical and fatalistic conceptions of the social process which prevail in orthodox circles, lays the author open to the charge of smuggling in philosophical idealism. But Marx’s dialectical materialism has always appeared to be idealistic to those who, having reduced all reality to matter in motion, find themselves incapable of explaining the interaction between things and thought except on the assumption that the mind produces what it acts upon. This last assumption is frankly idealistic but it is not involved in dialectical materialism.

Due to the limitations of space, a great deal of material bearing upon the central issues of the discussion has been omitted. Some important philosophical problems have not even been mentioned. It should be borne in mind, however, that what is left unsaid on these matters as well as on others – relevant or irrelevant – is not thereby denied, unless it is logically incompatible with the implications of what is said. No form of criticism is more unconscionable than that which proceeds on the assumption that an author intends to exhaust his subject-matter and then urges against the position taken that it implicitly denies views, which, by virtue of necessary selection, it has no opportunity to treat. This caution is added, not to prevent the reader from raising difficulties, but rather to insure that the difficulties which are raised bear relevantly upon the issues discussed. The author is quite aware that the position sketched in this book is not free from difficulties. He even states some of them. A position which has no difficulties is too easy to be true, or if true, too trivial to be of practical import in this world. On the other hand, because all positions have difficulties is no reason for refusing to take one. On some subjects – especially the subjects treated in this book – no one can escape taking a position. For every position towards the question of social change – including the dead point of indifferentism – has social consequences. The intelligent thing to do – so it seems to the author – is to take a position, recognise the difficulties and participate cooperatively, with all those who share the position, in their solution.

The author wishes to state his indebtedness to two contemporary writers: Georg Lukács, whose Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein stresses the significance of the dialectic element in Marx’s thought and links Marx up – unfortunately much too closely – with the stream of German classical philosophy; and to Karl Korsch, whose Marxismus und Philosophie confirms the author’s own hypothesis of the practical-historical axis of Marx’s thought, but which underestimates the difficulties involved in treating the formal aspect of Marx’s thought from this point of view. The text and footnotes carry acknowledgments to non-contemporary writers.

Some of the material in the early chapters was originally printed as an article in the Symposium of July 1931; thanks are due to the editors for permission to reprint it here. The Symposium article together with an earlier article on Dialectical Materialism in the Journal of Philosophy for 1928 contained material whose phrasing has given rise to serious misinterpretation. This has been corrected in the body of the book.

Sidney Hook
New York
1 January 1933

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Last updated: 20 February 2020