From: JulioHuato
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998
Subject: Lukacs

Alex raises very interesting points. I didn't read all the articles compiled in HCC, but I think Alex hits the nail on the head when he says that "L's target was not Engels because D of N was published after HCC, if my memory was correct." I'd add that the target was the Marxism of the II International (and III too!).

I think that, even if some of the most prominent leaders of the II International had a Kantian background, (perhaps based on some of M&E's most categorical statements about the inexorability of historical tendencies) the dominant view in the II International (and III International, at least under Stalin) was Hegelian insofar as they view history as the manifestation of some absolute driving force -- certainly not Hegel's Idea, but the Laws of History nonetheless! Perhaps it was more comforting for them to think of socialism as a juggernaut than to think of it as a fragil project, contingent upon vulnerable humans deliberately and painstakingly building it. The thought of human actions aligned with certain supra-historical (or divine) forces driving events on the same direction, even if delusional, has played very strong a role in history, witness Christianity!

I think that Marx's remarks about history as a product of active humans, motivated and restrained by preexisting conditions, his hedging about the inexorability of capitalism in his correspondence with V. Zasulich, etc., are strong enough to clear Marx of the sort of idealistic Hegelian slant that could be attributed to the II (and III) International.

On this regard, I've found extremely useful the ideas put forth by a Spanish- Mexican (Marxist) philosopher, Adolfo Sanchez Vazquez, who may not be as well known in the Anglo-Saxon world. Sanchez Vazquez points out that there are different layers of objectivity, from the hard-wired objectivity of nature to the soft-wired objectivity of, say, personal habits or collective artistic standards.

In other words, the level of objectivity of different regularities in reality should be understood in their specific spatial and temporal contexts. For instance, the objectivity of E=mc^2 is quite different from the objectivity of the law of value. In one case we refer to a law that governs the known universe since the Bing Bang until its eventual collapse (if astrophysicists are right about this) whereas the law of value refers to societies that produce commodities regularly. Humans reorganizing their mutual production relations may be able to dismantle the basis for the law of value whereas humans are powerless to unwire the laws of physics. In no case (I mean, neither in nature nor in society) those regularities can be pre-determined by the regularities already perceived (say, Engels' dialectical laws). Active scientific inquiry (driven by social practice) must still do the job. And surprises are far from being ruled out! However, even if imperfect, what has already been determined provides a map and a compass ...

But this is my personal interpretation, the direct reference is "Las ideas estéticas de Marx," Editorial Era, Mexico. In Spanish ... sorry!

Julio