Yang Geng: Ontology Thoughts of Stalin and Lukacs; The Extension Theory in the Understanding of Historical Materialism
In the history of Marxist philosophy, Stalin and Lukacs are remarkable. Stalin had ever been identified as the certain successor and epitome of orthodox Marxist philosophy, and his philosophical thought had ever been regarded as the sole supreme authority and constituted the basic framework of the Soviet model of Marxist philosophy. Lukacs had been considered as the rebel of orthodox Marxist philosophy and “theoretical revisionist”, whose philosophical thought had once been blamed for “trying to cancel materialism to emasculate dialectical materialism” but then regarded as “the model of modern Marxism” and “the highest achievement of Marxist philosophy in the twentieth century”; then, he was considered the pathfinder of western Marxism. In this chapter, I plan to make a new investigation and survey on the viewpoints of Stalin and Lukacs about the ontology of Marxist philosophy, in order to deepen the study of the ontology of Marxist philosophy.
I. From Lenin to Stalin
To grasp Stalin’s thought about the ontology of Marxist philosophy, the thought of Lenin about the same thing needs understanding in the first place, because the former is the direct successor of the latter, and takes the latter to extreme.
Lenin didn’t clearly point out Marxist philosophy was dialectical materialism and historical materialism, but such a viewpoint is implied in his philosophical works. As far as Lenin is concerned, Marxist philosophy is the first thorough complete morphology of materialism, namely that Marxist philosophy is materialism with respect to both the view of nature and the conception of history; materialism in the view of nature is “Marx’s dialectical materialism”, and materialism in the conception of history is “Marx’s historical materialism” (Selected Works of Lenin. Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1995: 3rd Ed., Vol. II, pp. 310 – 311.).
But in the system of Marxist philosophy, the statuses of dialectical materialism and historical materialism are different. Specifically, dialectical materialism is the theoretical basis, whilst historical materialism has the character of continuation, that is, it is the extension and continuation of dialectical materialism or the principles of materialism. Lenin explicitly puts forward “the theory of extension” in The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism: “Marx deepened and developed philosophical materialism to the full, and extended the cognition of nature to include the cognition of human society”. In Karl Marx, he clearly brings forth “the theory of continuation”: “the discovery of the materialist conception of history, or more correctly, the consistent continuation and extension of materialism into the domain of social phenomena …”. Thus Marx crowns “the structure of philosophical materialism”, so “Marx’s philosophy is a consummate philosophical materialism” (Selected Works of Lenin. 3rd Ed., Vol. II, p. 311.). Here, the logic of the “continuation and extension” of historical materialism out of dialectical materialism is that “since materialism in general explains consciousness as the outcome of being, and not conversely, then materialism as applied to the social life of mankind has to explain social consciousness as the outcome of social being” (ibid., p. 423.).
The problem is that what are the differences between general materialism and “Marx’s dialectical materialism” as the theoretical basis of historical materialism, i.e. as “the cognition of nature”, having verified by “the latest discoveries of natural science”? This is the key to grasping the ontology of Marxist philosophy in the horizon of Lenin.
From the viewpoint of Lenin, in respect of the view of nature, the difference between Marx’s materialism and general materialism is that Marx enriches materialism in the eighteenth century and Feuerbach’s materialism with Hegel’s dialectics. “That is why Marx and Engels laid the emphasis in their works rather on dialectical materialism than on dialectical materialism” (ibid., p. 225.). That is to say, there is no essential difference between Marx’s materialism and general materialism on the aspect of ontology. As said by Lenin, “the existence of matter does not depend on sensation. Matter is primary. Sensation, thought, consciousness are the supreme product of matter organized in a particular way. Such are the views of materialism in general, and of Marx and Engels in particular” (ibid., p. 51.).
Obviously, Lenin equated Marx’s materialistic view of nature with general materialism, and took the “materialism that excludes history and its process” for the theoretical basis of historical materialism, viz., actually taking the “abstract substance” separated from real mankind and their activity for ontology. Lenin didn’t really understand the opinion of Marx – “the chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively”, however, Marx’s dialectical materialism is the materialism that comprehends “sensuousness as practical activity” (Selected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. 2nd Ed., Vol. 1, pp. 54 and 56.). As a result, although Lenin saw the ontological significance of practice and even pointed out that “the view of practice is the primary and basic view of ontology”, he didn’t apprehend the ontological significance of practice, thus failing to fundamentally grasp the ontology of Marxist philosophy.
Stalin knew Lenin very well and took Lenin’s viewpoint to the extreme. He definitely classified Marxist philosophy into dialectical materialism and historical materialism, and thought dialectical materialism “is called dialectical materialism because its approach to the phenomena of nature, its method of studying and apprehending them, is dialectical, while its interpretation of the phenomena of nature, its conception of these phenomena, its theory, is material”; and “historical materialism is the extension of the principles of dialectical materialism to the study of social life, an application of the principles of dialectical materialism to the phenomena of the life of society, to the study of society and of its history” (Selected Works of Stalin. Vol. II, p. 424.).
It’s not hard to find that Stalin, as a matter of fact, construed dialectical materialism as a kind of view of nature unrelated to historical process, and took such so-called dialectical materialism as the theoretical basis for historical materialism. To demonstrate that historical materialism was the extension and application of dialectical materialism to the domain of social history, Stalin made a series logical deduction from nature to society: “if the connection between the phenomena of nature and their interdependence are laws of the development of nature, it follows, too, that the connection and interdependence of the phenomena of social life are laws of the development of society, and not something accidental”; “if our knowledge of the laws of development of nature is authentic knowledge, having the validity of objective truth, it follows that social life, the development of society, is also knowable, and that the data of science regarding the laws of development of society are authentic data having the validity of objective truths”; “if nature, being, the material world, is primary, and consciousness, thought, is secondary, derivative … is a reflection of this objective reality, it follows that the material life of society, its being, is also primary, and its spiritual life secondary, derivative, … a reflection of this objective reality” (ibid., pp. 435 and 436), and so on. That is to say, according to Stalin, from dialectical materialism to historical materialism, it is actually a logical operation process from natural being to social being.
But the problem is that nature and human society has essential differences despite their connections. In nature, everything is in blind interaction and happens not for expected purpose, but in human society, men engaged in activity have conscious intentions, and everything happens for expected purposes. So the materialistic conception of history isn’t the “extension and application” of the materialistic view of nature. Helvetius had “conceived it (materialism) immediately in its application to social life” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. 1st Chinese Ed., Vol. 2, p. 165.) long ago, but reached the idealistic conception of history. Feuerbach is like him. “As far as Feuerbach is a materialist he does not deal with history, and as far as he considers history he is not a materialist. With him materialism and history diverge completely.” (Selected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. 2nd Ed., Vol. 1, p. 78.)
Leaving aside whether the view of nature could be taken as the theoretical basis of the conception of history, the viewpoints of Stalin contain a fatal theoretical mistake: the natural being conceived by him is the “abstract nature” separated from real man and his activity and from historical process, actually “a thing given direct from all eternity, remaining ever the same” mentioned by Marx during his critique on Feuerbach. While pointing out natural environment is not the decisive cause of social development, Stalin argued that a change in natural environment of slight important required millions of years, and “which remains almost unchanged in the course of tens of thousands of years cannot be the chief cause of development of that which undergoes fundamental changes in the course of a few hundred years”.
At this point, Stalin, in effect, investigated natural environment in an isolated way, and didn’t understand the deep connotation of “historical nature and natural history” proposed by Marx and the important meaning of Marx’s suggestion to “set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of men”, thus he made a Feuerbach-style mistake, that is, “he does not see how the sensuous world around him is, not a thing given direct from all eternity, remaining ever the same, but the product of industry and of the state of society; and, indeed, in the sense that it is an historical product, the result of the activity of a whole succession of generations, … Even the objects of the simplest ‘sensuous certainty’ are only given him through social development, industry and commercial intercourse” (Ibid., p. 76.).
After the separation and abstraction, a kind of “abstract substance” becomes the cornerstone of Marxist philosophy in Stalin’s mind. Although Stalin didn’t mention the word “noumenon” or “ontology”, he in fact summed up Marxist philosophy as natural ontology.
Just because of this, Stalin essentially confused Marx’s materialism with mechanical materialism. In his discussion about the “basic features of Marxist materialism”, Stalin actually showed us only the common points between Marx’s materialism and mechanical materialism but didn’t know that the essential feature of Marx’s materialism is practical materialism and it is this theoretical particularity that distinguishes Marx’s new materialism from mechanical materialism and all old materialism. In his Dialectical and Historical Materialism, he quotes the sentence that “matter is the substratum of all changes” as the words of Marx, thinking it is one of the fundamental features of Marx’s materialism. In fact, this is an obvious misquotation, that is, Stalin takes the restatement of Hobbes’ thought by Marx for the thought of Marx himself, and misunderstands the viewpoint criticized by Marx as that appreciated by Marx. From Marx’s point of view, materialism in Bacon “holds back within itself in a naive way the germs of a many-sided development. Matter, surrounded by a sensuous, poetic glamour, seems to attract man’s whole entity by winning smiles”.
However, in Hobbes, materialism “takes to misanthropy” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. 1st Chinese Ed., Vol. 2, p. 164.). It is because in Hobbes’ view, “matter is the substratum of all changes”, and man is just a kind of manifestation of natural substance; “every human passion is a mechanical movement which has a beginning and an end”; “man is subject to the same laws as nature. Power and freedom are identical”. Marx thus believes in Hobbes, “sensuousness” has nothing to do with man and thereby “loses its poetic blossom, passes into the abstract experience of the geometrician” (ibid., p. 164.). In other words, in the system of mechanical materialism, “abstract substance” or “abstract sensuousness” is made the subject or substratum of all changes, the so-called noumenon of the world.
However, Stalin didn’t understand that, so he took Hobbes’ viewpoint for that of Marx. As far as I am concerned, this isn’t an accidental ignorance, but it indicates that Stalin didn’t clearly perceive the essential differences of Marx’s new materialism from mechanical materialism and all old materialism.
We can see that the dialectical materialism apprehended by Stalin is in essence a view of nature that simply adds materialism with dialectics, and has a thick color of mechanical materialism. The first person who confuses the materialistic view of nature of Marx with mechanical materialism is Mehring, who thinks Marx and Engels “are mechanical materialists in the domain of natural science, just as they are historical materialists in the field of society”. Once such a dialectical materialism that “excludes history and its process” is regarded as the theoretical basis for historical materialism, historical materialism will be inevitably “distorted”: the “material exchange” between man and nature and the “anthropological nature” that Marx focuses on disappear; practice, the mode of being of man, the essence of social life, and the groundwork of the real world, is concealed; and the subjectivity of man is dissolved. What’s worse, in this so-called dialectical materialism, nature is separated from human activity and historical process, and becomes the “abstract nature” or “abstract substance” actually criticized by Marx.
To my understanding, this is an involution to the early modern materialism, which takes “abstract substance” as noumenon, a horrendous theoretical retrogression abandoning the epoch-making contribution of Marxist philosophy to a quite large extent. It indicates that Stalin attempted to expound Marxist philosophy in a popular manner, but he simply and one-sidedly understood Marxist philosophy and its ontology; in fact, he interpreted Marxist philosophy with the logic of early modern materialism.
No matter from which perspective, history or logic, historical materialism is not the “extension and application” of “dialectical materialism” to the domain of social history. In the philosophical system of Marx, there is no dialectical materialism independently as the theoretical basis or historical materialism independently having the character of application. On the contrary, historical materialism is the first great discovery of Marx, and since history is interpreted materialistically, a new development path has been opened up. It can be seen from in-depth investigation of the history of Marxist philosophy that Marx was not a materialist before becoming a historical materialist, and immediately when he became a historical materialist, he also became a dialectical materialist.
To put it another way, historical materialism was founded on the same day with dialectical materialism. Dialectical materialism and historical materialism are not two different doctrines, but different names of the same doctrine, namely Marx’s materialism. The so-called dialectical materialism that “excludes history and its process” and is separated from historical materialism isn’t the dialectical materialism of Marx, and it is in essence the “restoration” of natural materialism under modern conditions and will lead to historical idealism under certain conditions. As Marx said, “The weak points in the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism that excludes history and its process, are at once evident from the abstract and ideological conceptions of its spokesmen, whenever they venture beyond the bounds of their own specialty.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. 1st Chinese Ed., Vol. 23, p. 410.)
The Soviet model of Marxist philosophy, whose foundation is laid and whose framework is erected by Stalin, is basically the “abstract materialism”, or “the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism that excludes history and its process”, mentioned by Marx. When it prattles about “the materiality of world” while being separated from human activity and social history, it has stealthily gone “in the abstract materialistic direction, or rather idealism” criticized by Marx.
II. FromHistory and Class Consciousness to The Ontology of Social Being
The understanding of Stalin on Marxist philosophy and its ontology had been regarded as the sole supreme authority, and reigned in the history of Marxist philosophy for several decades, whereas the apprehension of Lukacs on the same thing had aroused fireworks at the very beginning and gone through ups and downs for several decades, and towards it, different peoples held different opinions. Whether Lukacs is a Marxist or a “western Marxist” is still under debate. As a matter of fact, in 1985, the 100th anniversary of Lukacs’ birth, Hungarian Socialist Worker Party at that time had made a “final judgment” on him, that is, “Georg Lukacs is a great outstanding representative of Marxist-Leninist thought”. I agree with this judgment, and believe Lukacs is one of the most significant and influential philosophers in the twentieth century. The hardships undergone by his thought reflect the vicissitudes in the history of Marxist philosophy in the twentieth century.
Seen in general, the expositions of Lukacs about the ontology of Marxist philosophy can be divided into two stages; the thought at the former stage are centrally reflected in History and Class Consciousness and that at the latter stage in The Ontology of Social Being. “Ontology is the real philosophical base of Marxism.” (A Dictionary of Western Marxist Figures. English Ed., p. 268.) Either History and Class Consciousness or The Ontology of Social Being focuses on the ontology of Marxist philosophy, but the understandings of the two are quite different.
In History and Class Consciousness, the discussion of Lukacs about the ontology of Marx has a noticeable feature, that is, negating natural dialectics, confining dialectics “within the spheres of history and society”, and stressing on totality.
According to Lukacs, there is no natural dialectics referred to by Engels, and all dialectical questions left by Descartes, Kant and Hegel, including the contradictions between subject and object, between thinking and being, and between freedom and necessity and the sublation of “antinomies”, “guide us to history” ([.] Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness. Chongqing: Chongqing Publishing House, 1989: p. 161.). Since nature “is a social category”, “in any definite stage of social development, whatever is considered to be natural, this naturalness is related to man; what form the man-related nature takes on, namely the form, content, scope and objectivity of nature, is conditioned by society”, and “the growth of knowledge about nature is a social phenomenon” ([.] Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness. Chongqing: Chongqing Publishing House, 1989: pp. 252 and 236.). In this way, Lukacs excluded natural dialectics from historical dialectics, confined Marxist dialectics within the realm of history, and reduced it to historical dialectics.
The resolution of the problem of dialectics “guides” Lukacs to “history”, and the exploration of history leads him to the practical activity of man.
In the view of Lukacs, history is the product of human activity, the object created by subject. As object, history is the objective process of human practice; as subject, history is the process of human self-creation. History is essentially the development of practical activity of man in time, namely the “diachronic” social practice; it can be grasped as our act. Lukacs realizes the practical essence of history through the investigation of history and the historical essence of practice through the analysis of practice. He thinks practice is a historical activity rather than abstract activity; it is a historical activity breaking the alienation of man rather than a pure epistemological category.
The interaction between subject and object in historical activity constitutes the decisive factor of dialectics and the movement of history as a totality. From Lukacs’ point of view, a whole is universally superior to a part, and any part has a meaning only when connected with the whole. “Only in this context which sees the isolated facts of social life as aspects of the historical process and integrates them in a totality, can knowledge of the facts hope to become knowledge of reality.” “Action is directed objectively towards a transformation of totality.” (Ibid., p. 10 and 198.)
On this ground, Lukacs insisted everything should be based on and explained with history, and even the subject of practice was outspread in the dimension of history. Thus he thought he found the foundation for the ontology of Marxist philosophy – history, and affirmed Marx’s “critical philosophy implies above all historical criticism” (ibid., p. 53.).
These opinions of Lukacs are fairly profound. In The German Ideology, Marx brings forward the thought of “historical nature”, thus cutting the curtain of Feuerbach’s “nature worship” and lighting up nature with the sunshine of history. When Lukacs affirmed nature was a social category, he happened to have the same view with Marx, and that view was like an “antidote” for the misunderstandings of Marxist philosophy as general materialism and the ontology of Marxist philosophy as natural ontology; his affirmation of the inner link between history and practice and the totality of history was very meaningful for economic materialism, which criticized the Second International, i.e. for the vulgarization of the materialistic conception of history.
But Lukacs was “overdoing” after all. He affirmed the “historical nature” but overlooked “natural history”, and didn’t understand Marx’s thought of “natural history” cut the path of Hegel’s absolute idea to history; he affirmed the totality of history but overstated the effect of proletarian consciousness, and even thought it was the standpoint of historical totality rather than economic necessity that constituted the decisive difference between Marxism and the proletarian ideology; he affirmed the inner link between history and practice and introduced practice into ontology, but abolished the relationship of man to nature in practical activity, limited the stage of human practical activity within the relationship between man and man, and reduced it to the class consciousness of the proletariat, thereby casting a shadow of idealism on History and Class Consciousness.
The mistakes of Lukacs in History and Class Consciousness, fundamentally, were because he understood practice one-sidedly and ignored the material exchange between man and nature, the substantial content in practical activity. This again proves the truthfulness and predictability of Marx’s opinion that excluding the relationship between man and nature from history is inclined to giving rise to the idealistic conception of history.
Lukacs was highly conscious of this in his later period. Since the 1930s, he had criticized himself for several times, and confessed that in History and Class Consciousness, he ignored “labor, the medium of metabolism and interaction between nature and society and the basic category of Marxism”, and excluding the practical relationship between man and practice from history “means that the most important real pillars of the Marxist view of the world disappear” ([.] Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, p. 21.). In consequence, History and Class Consciousness “is unintentionally colored by an overriding subjectivism”, submits to such a tendency that has happened in the history of Marxism, that is, “the tendency to view Marxism exclusively as a theory of society, as social philosophy, and hence to ignore or repudiate it as a theory of nature”, and finally like this tendency, strikes “at the very roots of Marxian ontology” (ibid., p. 53.).
The self-criticism of Lukacs is moving and quite profound. Just due to this, he wrote the important works titled The Ontology of Social Being, with the hope to lay a foundation for Marx’s thought that “history is the sole science” and “make out the principles of Marxian ontology” (Autobiography of Lukacs, p. 48.).
In Lukacs’ view, the theoretical work of Marx is directed linked up with the theoretical clue left over by Hegel and meanwhile revolutionarily changes Hegelian philosophy and even the whole traditional philosophy. The secret to this revolutionary change rests with Marx’s establishment of the scientific view of practice or labor.
“Only Marx’s view of labor can materialistically resolve the insurmountable difficulties in front of Hegel arising as frequently as his talented presentiment. The reason for this is because Marx’s view of labor gives content to the material exchange between society and nature, thus making substantial the relationship between the categories of labor and their natural premises, and the changes of these premises resulting from the social development of labor.” (A Collection of Literary Essays of Lukacs, p. 432.)
In the history of Marxist philosophy, one of the creative contributions of Lukacs is “re-bringing the factor of practice to the attention center of and primary position in Marxist philosophy” ([Yugoslavia] Vranicki, History of Marxism. Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1988: Vol. 2, p. 101.), affirming the scientific view of practice is the theoretical basis of Marxist philosophy, and specifying the ontology of Marxist philosophy as the ontology of social being, namely practical ontology. From Lukacs’ point of view, practice, especially labor as “primary practice”, always occupies the fundamental core position in social being. “The entire social being, in terms of its ontological feature, is built upon the groundwork of the purposive enactment of human practice.” “It is the labor theory of Marx, the theory which conceives labor as the exclusive existence mode of the purposive creative being, that establishes the character of social being for the first time.” ([.] Lukacs, The Ontology of Social Being. English Ed., pp. 309 and 25.) It is for this reason that Lukacs also calles the ontology of social being practical ontology.
Lukacs thought that “the labor of man always has a purpose – it sets a purpose, and this purpose is a selected result, therefore the labor of man represents man’s freedom. Such freedom, however, only exists in bringing the objective natural forces subject to the law of cause and effect of the material world into operation” (Autobiography of Lukacs, p. 294.). That is to say, labor contains the purpose of man, and has the objective material premise. It is an active natural-transforming activity that inserts the link of man’s purpose into the objective chain of cause and effect, and by doing this, it doesn’t only changes the form of nature, but realizes the purpose of man and the need of society in nature, thereby making nature ceaselessly “socialized”. Meanwhile the “constraints” of natural being on social being won’t disappear; “I’m talking about the retreat of constraints from nature, but not the disappearance of nature”, and it is impossible for men to “fully sublate these constraints”. Thus, Lukacs subsumed the material exchange between man and nature, as well as the conversion process between material and idea, into the category of practice, thereby overcoming the defects in History and Class Consciousness and giving concrete contents to the concept of practice.
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Lukacs’ opinion is perfectly consistent with that of Marx. In the Economic Manuscripts of 1861 – 1863, Marx points out that labor is “purposeful activity aimed … at the appropriation of natural material”. Marx has emphasized this opinion again and again, and writes it into the final draft of Capital, in which Marx points out, “At the end of every labor-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the laborer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realizes a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi.”
Fundamentally, the transcendence of The Ontology of Social Being over History and Class Consciousness is that it sets up a correct concept of practice, connects man with nature, social being with natural being, on this basis, unifies the purpose of man with the objective relation of cause and effect, and deeply expounds the relationship between value and “oughtness”.
In Lukacs’ opinion, the category of value shows the foundation of social being – labor, and the issue of value is inevitably associated with the issue of “oughtness”. “Such a value (affirmation or negation) is involved in any practice; if value cannot become such a purpose assumption of object, it can by no means be connected with any ontology in society.” ([.] Lukacs, The Ontology of Social Being. English Ed., p. 94.) Consequently, man raises himself to the height of society, and constantly realizes the translation from “being-in-itself” to “being-for-itself” during practical activity, making himself more and more take on the form and content of society.
“We cannot reasonably discuss social being unless we understand that the formation of social being, its transcendence over its own foundation, and its independence achievement are all based on labor, that is, based on the continuous realization of the enactment of purpose.” (Ibid., p. 12.)
Lukacs thus believed practice constituted the existence of man, i.e. the ontological foundation of social being. “It is labor that introduces the unified dualism-based correlation between purposiveness and causality into beings, and there was only the process of cause and effect in nature prior to the generation of labor. So this complex composed of two aspects only exists in labor and its social results, in social practice. Consequently, the purposively-set activity that transforms reality becomes the ontological foundation for the existence of human society.” ([.] Lukacs, The Ontology of Social Being. English Ed., pp. 14 – 15.)
Owing to correct understanding on practice and its effect, Lukacs extremely underlined that “practice” or “labor” was the basic category of Marxist philosophy, expressly took practical ontology as the theoretical basis of Marxist philosophy, and connected society with nature by virtue of the category of practice, with a view to establishing the ontology of social being. He definitely pointed out that “the process of labor is the process between man and nature, and the metabolism between man and nature has an ontological foundation” (ibid., p. 72.), and the concept of labor was the key of his analysis. “In the light of Marx’s thought, I conceive ontology as philosophy itself, the philosophy on the basis of history … The essence of human society is the purposive activity of man, that is, labor. This is the uppermost new category in that it includes everything” (Autobiography of Lukacs, p. 203.). The exposition of Lukacs makes me spontaneously think of a famous saying of Marx – “all social life is essentially practical”.
If “history” is considered as the core category in History and Class Consciousness, then “practice” or “labor” is the core category in The Ontology of Social Being. In-depth exploration of practice made Lukacs realized that the human being was all social being, whose fundamental feature was historicity; additionally, nature entering into social being and its objectivity extended into social being rather than disappeared. Thus he argued, “Practice itself most immediately makes the most important proof for the essence of social being, and as to the real critical ontology, practice is the necessary objective core.” (Lukacs, The Ontology of Social Being. English Ed., p. 13.)
At this point, Lukacs transcended Stalin and his own History and Class Consciousness, returned to Marx, restored the original look of the ontology of Marxist philosophy, and showed a new ideological horizon.
However, as he showed us a new ideological horizon, Lukacs suddenly took a step back – he considered general ontology, or natural ontology, as the premise and foundation of the ontology of social being. In the sight of Lukacs, “social ontology is premised on general ontology”, and “the ontology of social being can be built only based on natural ontology”. “It is based on the ontology of dialectical materialism that historical materialism gets the scientific basis for its inherent necessity and reliability.” (Ibid., pp. 326, 472 and 151.)
Lukacs had stringently criticized the philosophical though of Stalin, and indeed he was different from Stalin while specifically elaborating Marxist philosophy and its thought of ontology, and even reached a new state concerning the ontology of social being. However, he happened to have the same view with Stalin when it came to the relationship respectively between historical materialism and dialectical materialism and between dialectical materialism and natural materialism; the opinions of them are strikingly similar – Lukacs conceived the ontology of dialectical materialism as the theoretical basis of historical materialism in the end, and made the ontology of dialectical materialism natural ontology-based. In this way, natural ontology criticized by Marx went so far as to become the premise and foundation of the ontology of Marxist philosophy. Lukacs transcended Stalin, but ultimately returned to Stalin. In this sense, both reached the same end.
This is really a tragedy, a theoretical tragedy that seemingly should not happen but really happened to Lukacs. From the angle of epistemology, the fundamental cause of this tragedy was that there was a shadow lingering in his mind, namely the investigation method in line with “time priority”, i.e. the method of reductionism. On that methodological basis, Lukacs “conceives the order of priority” of the three major modes of being – inorganic nature, organic nature and human society – “in the irreversible process of world as the core of self-thinking on ontology” (Lukacs, The Ontology of Social Being.English Ed., p. 10.). From this it is not difficult for us to understand why Lukacs finally set natural ontology as the premise and foundation for the ontology of social being.
At this point, Lukacs ignored the profound thought of Marx that nature or any substance separated from real man and his activity means “nothing” or “non-existent being”, and materialism based on “abstract substance” is “abstract materialism”, which connotes “the direction of idealism”. In front of the contradiction of “logical priority” between the “time priority” of nature to man and the relationship of man to nature “that exist for me”, it seemed that Lukacs was powerless.
III. Brief Conclusion
I make some comments on the understandings of Stalin and Lukacs on the ontology of Marxist philosophy in the sections above, and passingly discuss the view of Marx on the same issue. Now I come to the following conclusion upon the summarization of the above.
I don’t agree with the opinion that Marx hasn’t discussed the issue of ontology and Marxist philosophy is only a world outlook but not ontology. This is a misunderstanding and a prejudice, a senseless pride and prejudice. In fact, Marx has dealt with ontology in his Doctoral Dissertation on the aspects of “the proof of ontology” and “the determination of ontology”, discussed “the issue of the affirmation of ontology” in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, and in The German Ideology focused on the issue of the existence of man, which is actually the issue of ontology, because ontology is to study the essence and significance of existence.
With respect to this point, the viewpoint of Lukacs is correct – though Marx doesn’t write any works specialized in ontology, Marxist philosophy “is the exposition about existence, i.e. the pure ontology, in the ultimate sense” (Lukacs, The Ontology of Social Being. English Ed., p. 559.). In my opinion, the revolutionary change realized by Marxist philosophy in the history of philosophy is launched and spread at the level of ontology, with the result that traditional ontology is terminated, and the ontology of new materialism, i.e. practical ontology, is constructed.
According to Marx, practice is both an objective material activity and a purposive creative activity, and what is moving in and for itself is the practical activity of mankind. It is practice that on the one hand provides foundation and basis for human beings to transform, create and conceive the real world and on the other hand supplies final impetus for the self-development of mankind and constitutes the mode of being of man. Through it, men don’t only transform and cognize nature constantly, but also transform, create and understand themselves, including biological organization, social relations, thinking mode, and so on. Practice constitutes the essence of the real world and the living noumenon of man. In this sense, Marx holds that “man’s feelings, passions, etc., are not merely anthropological phenomena in the (narrower) sense, but truly ontological affirmations of being (of nature)” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. 1st Chinese Ed., Vol. 42, p. 150.).
The practical ontology of Marx is directed to “the real world of its times” and emphasized the elimination of the aliened living condition of man, and affirms that “for the practical materialist, i.e. the communist, it is a question of revolutionizing the existing world, of practically attacking and changing existing things” (Selected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. 2nd Ed., Vol. 1, p. 75.), thereby radically resolving the contradictions between man and world, between being and essence, between freedom and necessity, and between individual and species. As a result, Marx brings ontology from “Heaven” down to “Earth”, and combines ontology with the sufferings and happiness in the world, with the ideal of communism; or we should say he makes an ontological proof for the emancipation of the proletariat and all mankind, thereby opening up “a path of conceiving the reality through ontology” and finding the point directly bonding philosophy with the change of world. Marxist philosophy is fundamentally practical ontology, namely the ontology of existentialism. It is dually concerned with the ultimate being and real existence of man, the most exciting concern in the whole history of philosophy.
The incisive opinion of Marx didn’t arouse the attention of people for a long historical period. In regard to the ontology of Marxist philosophy, Lenin had wrongly understood it, but Stalin took to extreme the opinion of Lenin that historical materialism was the extension and application of the principles of materialism to the domain of social history, mistaking Marxist philosophy for general materialism and the ontology of Marxist philosophy thoroughly for natural ontology. Stalin in fact interpreted Marxist philosophy with the logic of early modern materialism and abandoned the epoch-making contribution of Marxist philosophy to a quite large extent. That was a horrendous theoretical retrogression in the history of Marxist philosophy.
Lukacs is sharp-eyed, and his ontology of social being predicts a new train of thought to resolve the problem and, on the road of “reviving” the ontology of Marxist philosophy, provides us with a broad thinking space to comprehensively and deeply apprehend it. However, he was eventually guided by improper method to general materialism and its ontology. Lukacs transcended Stalin, but ultimately returned to Stalin, to the early modern materialism. The merit and demerit of Lukacs, his success and failure, both prove a truth that it is necessary to make a new understanding on the ontology of Marxist philosophy and its contemporary significance on the standpoint of contemporary practice, science and philosophy.
There is a peculiar phenomenon frequently happening in history – a theory or even the whole philosophical theory of a great philosopher always tends to show its intrinsic value and catch the attention of people again after the philosopher’s death and a relatively long historical movement, so is the historical destiny of the ontology of Marxist philosophy, i.e. the practical ontology or the ontology of existentialism, which was put forward and founded in the mid-nineteenth century, but didn’t arouse people’s understanding and concern at that time and during a relatively long historical period thereafter. For this reason, when constructing the textbook system of Marxist philosophy, the descendants precisely ignored the ontology of existentialism of Marx, and exactly abandoned the method for interpreting the significance of beings based on the existence of man, thus resulting in the inherent defect in the traditional textbook system of Marxist philosophy, that is, seeking for the basis of all spiritual phenomena in the “abstract substance” separated from historical process.
The historical movement and the development of practice, science and philosophy itself in the twentieth century highlight Marx’s ontology of existentialism and the intrinsic value of the method for interpreting the significance of beings based on the existence of man, and reveal the modernity and contemporary significance of Marxist philosophy to people again. It can be predicted that constructing a new textbook system of Marxist philosophy that coincides with the “text” of Marxist philosophy by interpreting the significance of beings based on the existence of man and comprehending and grasping the relationship between man and world on the basis of practice will gain “overwhelming popularity” soon, and become an important topic of Marxists again.