Thursday, June 09, 2022

Hal Draper & E. Haberkern - Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution Volume 5: War & Revolution

This last volume of Hal Draper's monumental study of Karl Marx's thought is a very different work to the earlier ones. In part this is because it was mostly completed by Draper's collaborator Ernie Haberkern,  and thus has a difference in style to the earlier volumes. Haberkern worked from extensive notes but these were of course incomplete on Draper's death. Nonetheless the book provides a useful continuation of the earlier volumes and while it is clearly not the book that Draper would have produced on his own, it is very much a work of Marxist scholarship that should be read with the earlier volumes.

The title is on War and Revolution and the authors explain that earlier in their political careers, Marx and Engels saw a close link between the two - arguing, essentially, that war provoked revolution. The later drew back from such an explicit linkage, but they always looked at the way that war exacerbated tensions and created conditions for radical politics to push through. In the years after the death of Engels, Marxists built on their ideas to develop a theory of Imperialism which linked war directly to the accumulation of capital and the nation state. Engels, towards the end of his life, came close to such arguments, but it was later socialists who solidified them. But the positions that Marx and Engels took were often used to justify both pro and anti-war positions by later socialists. The transference of Marx and Engels arguments to the situation in the 20th century was, essentially, a bastardisation of their revolutionary work but it is sometimes based on real political positions that they took. 

Nonetheless, in the introduction Haberkern argues that contrary to the debates during the First World War, "neither Kautsky, nor Potresov, nor Lenin, nor, as far as I have been able to determine, any other socialists during World War I, cited the two wars after 1848 in which Marx and Engels unambiguously took a prowar stand in support of a bourgeois government." The authors unpick the reasons for Marx and Engels' position and implicitly explain why these weren't applicable to the global situation in 1914 (and one might add, still aren't applicable today).

One key question for Engels was the linkage between war and national liberation. Writing of the 1848 revolution, the authors say that Engels stressed that "in Hungary too social revolution and national liberation are inextriably linked." Here they point out that confusion for many about Marx and Engels' attitude to national liberation stems from a misreading of there arguments. The authors point out that in the Communist Manifesto the words "The workers have no country" are a mistranslation, and it should say "Vaterland" meaning that "the answer of the Manifesto is that the workers' have no Vaterland because they do not have political power anywhere". Draper and Haberkern continue:

The internationalism of the Manifesto lies in its assertion that he success of the coming revolution requires the victory of the working class in at least several of the leading European nations. A national victory was the first step in a European revolution. That first step could not be taken without taking into account the  immediate issues facing specific national movements. It was just as obvious to Marx and Engels that a national movement that restricted itself to the first step was doomed to fail.

Exploring these ideas takes Draper and Haberkern onto an extended discussion of Marx's and, particularly, Engels' positions on a number of specific cases of national liberation. One key discussion here, and one that I will no doubt return to, is the authors' exploration of the meaning behind Engels' infamous phrase "non-historic peoples" to describe "peoples who are incapable of forming viable national states." The authors point out that neither Marx nor Engels ever supported "the suppression of the national rights of any national group on the ground that it was 'non-historic' or 'non-viable' when said nation actually proved its viability, its 'historicity' by asserting its rights." Draper and Haberkern explain the position taken by Engels:

The problem is Engels was just beginning to sort through his own ideas... it is enough to note that Engels' thinking at this time was dominated by two propositions. The first was that the triumph of the bourgeoisie over the remnants of pre-bourgeois society was progressive, desirable, and represented the victory of civilisation over barbarism. It was also the necessary prelude to the rise of a workers' movement. The second proposition was that this process required the creation of large, culturally unified states and the consequent destruction of the patchwork of small, backward remnants of medieval politics that covered central and Eastern Europe.

The events of 1848, and the cowardly role of the bourgeoise, led Marx and Engels to change their attitudes to these revolutionary processes. But the authors also note that Engels himself did not adhere too closely to this position:

In every case where Engels is called upon in 1848 to describe a real political struggle between 'pure and simple nationalism and a socially revolutionary national movement, whether that case be Hungary, Poland or Bohemia, the 'historical nations' line disappears. For good reason. This idealist concept was of no use in analysing a real movement. It appears only after the fact in a cases where the democratic movement has been defeated or... never really got off the ground. And then it is only a simple description of fact dressed up in Hegelian phraseology.

The fact that Marx and Engels developed their politics over time has been a central theme of all of Draper's works and emphasises the limitations of an approach that plucks quotes from their private letters or out of context. It is also particularly true of their approach to different wars. Firstly though, it must be emphasised that Marx and Engels were not abstract political commentators, their statements were linked to concrete circumstance. A point that Draper and Haberkern emphasise:

Despite the confusion, in reality and in Engels' head, one major difference between his 1848 position and his post 1870 stands out. In 1848, Marx, Engels and radicals of all political shades looked forward to a war by revolutionary Germany, under the leadership of Bourgeois democratic revolutionaries against Tsarist Russia. Marx and Engels, after 1870, did not desire a war with Russia. They feared it. And they were adamant that they would not support any of the governments in such a war. They were for using the crisis of war to replace the governments in all countries be they republics or monarchies.

It was this internationalist revolutionary position that was abandoned by most of the Second International in 1914 and which Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and a handful of revolutionaries stuck with. By the late 19th century Engels was developing an approach to imperialism that would be closer to Lenin's position in Imperialism. But he was still holding on to politics that originated in an earlier period. 

These arguments were important for Engels who was fighting a battle against the emergence of reformist politics within the German Social Democratic Party and the International. Draper and Haberkern explore the way that Engels fought this, because his hesitation and fear of splitting organisations meant that he pulled his political punches on occasion. It is this that led to Engels being accused, incorrectly, of becoming reformist towards the end of his life. Engels, the authors argue, was ahead of the curve in understanding the world had changed post 1870, but "never sat down to think through what this meant". 

Readers of this volume will find that a significant difference with earlier books is that there is much more of an engagement in with how Marx and Engels' ideas have been used since their death. In part that's because of the material and how subsequent pro-war and anti-imperialist socialists have quoted Marx. But it's also because some of this material comes from the imperialist epoch itself. As such the debates and discussions around national liberation movements and imperialism are indispensable and make this book worth reading. 

However, there are qualifications. This book is not as good as the earlier volumes for reasons already stated and the edition I have, the volume most easily obtainable at the moment, is peppered with typos, spelling mistakes and proofing errors. References are incomplete and words misspelled. It is a disappointment given the extremely exacting standards of the earlier works and perhaps a new, freshly edited volume, ought to be produced.

Related Reviews

Draper - Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution Volume 1: State & Bureaucracy
Draper - Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution Volume 2: The Politics of Social Classes
Draper - Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution Volume 3: The 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat'
Draper - Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution Volume 4: Critique of Other Socialisms 


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