Marxist Humanism

MIA: Subjects: Marxist Humanism:

Marxist Humanism
and the “New Left”

An index to the writings and biographies of Marxist-Humanist writers.

See Humanism in the M.I.A. Encyclopedia.

Marxist Humanism emerged in the wake of Khrushchev's speech at the 20th

Congress and the short-lived “thaw” which followed in the Sooviet Union. Partly, it
was a result of disillusionment with the “state socialism” of the Eastern European
states. In Yugoslavia, Tito's regime had been relatively liberal and independent of
Stalin, but humanism was also reflected in the Prague Spring, and in the more
liberal regime of Edward Gierek in Poland. In the West, Marxist Humanism grew
in response to the same social forces in the capitalist countries, and would burst
forth in 1968 through the student uprisings beginning in Paris, and the failure of the
Communist Parties to adequately respond to these sentiments. (See
Eurocommunism for an alternative but not dissimilar response.)

In 1965, Erich Fromm, encouraged by the emergence of the Praxis group in

Yugoslavia, and wanting to stimulate Eastern-Western dialogue on humanist basis,
published An International Symposium of Socialist Humanism, and received
submissions from the following writers: Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Raya
Dunayevskaya, Ernst Bloch, T.B. Bottomore, Lucien Goldman, Maximilien Rubel,
Eugene Kamenka, Oskar Schatz, Irving Fletcher, Mathilde Niel, Ernst Florian
Winter, Wolfgang Abendroth, Norman Thomas, Richard Titmus, Bertrand Russell,
Stephen King Hall, Paul Medow, Danilo Dolci, Umberto Cerroni and Calvano della
Volpe (from the Western countries); Predrag Vranicki, Gajo Petrovic, Mihailo
Markovic, Veljko Korac, Danilo Pejovic, Rudi Supek, Karel Kosík, Ivan Sviták,
Milan Prucha, Adam Schaff, Bogdan Suchodolski, Marek Fritzhand, Bronislaw
Baczko (from the Communist countries) and Léopold Senghor, Nirmal Kumar Bose
(from the Third World countries). Many of these writers also counted themselves as
Marxists and represent the leaders of the current of Marxist known as “Marxist
Humanism.” The other components are those who initiated the “New Left” in the
early 1960s in Britain and the U.S., such as the founders of the New Left Review in
England (E. P. Thompson, Raphael Samuel, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Ralph
Miliband, Alasdair MacIntyre, Isaac Deutscher and John Saville) and people like C.
Wright Mills in the U.S. and German Greens like Rudolph Bahro.

Marxist Humanists usually base themselves on the

early, humanist writings of Karl Marx, especially the
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

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(which had only been deciphered and translated,

thanks to Raya Dunayevskaya, in the 1930s). The
focus on the early works is not exclusive, but
generally speaking, Marxist-Humanism defines itself
in opposition to “objectivist” tendencies in social
theory, reflected in orthodox interpretations of
“historical materialism” (See for example Stalin's
Dialectical and Historical Materialism, 1938), in which the agent
of history is not human beings, but either abstract entities such as
Louis Althusser, a “laws of history” or inanimate entities such as “means of
vocal opponent of
Marxist Humanism production.”

Marxist humanists therefore emphasise human agency and subjectivity, as against

structuralist interpretations of social theory, as, for example, espoused by Louis
Althusser, and place greater emphasis on ethical rather than social-theoretical
problems of Marxism.

It is an irony that despite the fact that this tendency is characterised by its emphasis
on subjectivity, it has existed almost entirely within the walls of the academy,
characterised by its objectivity. Although few have been political activists or
organisers (Raya Dunayevskaya is an exception), they have all been prolific
publicists and have been influential in mass movements through their writing and
publishing.

Below are links to biographies and works of some representatives of Marxist

Humanism. The inclusion of a writer in this collection is not intended to imply any
judgment about their credentials as “Marxists” — in general these people are hard
to classify and do not belong to a coherent current; most in fact did not have a
party affiliation.

See Marx’s Humanism Today, Raya Dunayevskaya, 1965.

The “Johnson-Forrest Tendency”

The “Johnson-Forrest Tendency” was formed as a faction in the

American Trotskyist movement by Raya Dunayevskaya and C.L.R.
James. So, even though “Marxist-Humanism” is overwhelmingly a
current of ex-Stalinist, male academics and writers, it did not begin
that way.

Raya Dunayevskaya had been a Secretary of Trotsky and was

the first to translate Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts and make them
known to the rest of the world. From her interest in the early Marx
she developed an interest in the study of Hegel, especially the Logic. Her current is

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still represented by News and Letters.

C. L. R. James came to Britain from the Carribbean as a literary

critic and cricket commentator, but he came in contact with and
joined the Trotskyist Movement. James also made his own study of
Hegel and did ground-breaking research on the history of black
struggles around the world

Although far more “orthodox” than the “Marxist-humanist”

movement which blossomed in the 1960s, drawing intellectuals and
writers out of the Communist Party, Dunayevskaya and James were
among the first on the Marxist Left to turn positively to the new
social movements beginning to emerge. See Raya Dunyevskaya’s Philosophy and
Revolution.

Like many other German Communist intellectuals, Ernst Bloch

fled to America when Hitler came to power, but continued to publish
in German for a German-speaking audience. He returned to East
Germany in 1948, and developed a strand of humanist Marxism
which eventually brought him into conflict with the Communist
Party and he fled to the West in 1961. He retains a large audience in
Germany, especially the East, to this day.

The Frankfurt School

Herbert Marcuse was “baby” of the Frankfurt School when

they were forced to flee Hitler's Germany and like most of the
others, Marcuse made his home in the U.S.. Like the rest of the
Frankfurt School, Marcuse’s works were obscure and inaccessible to
the mass audience. However, his somewhat pessimistic analysis of
modern capitalism and “consumerism” struck a chord with the young
student radicals in France and the U.S. particularly, and One
Dimensional Man achieved a mass audience that Reason and Revolution never
did.

Erich Fromm published the collection, An International

Symposium of Socialist Humanism in 1965, helping to bring a
diverse group of writers together into a dialogue. Although Fromm
had fled Germany, he continued to work on the problems of social
psychology which so deeply moved those who had witnessed the
rise of Hitler. Fromm was one of the first to attempt to make an
amalgam of Marx and Freud.

The Praxis Group (Yugoslavia)

The Praxis Group was a group of Marxist philosophers and

sociologists with humanist orientation that published the journal
“Praxis” from 1964 to 1974. The Praxis Group was the first

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organised, public oppositional group to emerge in Eastern Europe, in

the relatively more liberal conditions under Josip Broz Tito, to bring
forward a Marxist alternative to “state socialism” and Stalinist
dogma and orthodoxy.

Predrag Vranicki was a Professor of Philosophy at Zagreb

University, most famous for his study of the ideas of the Marxist
theoreticians entitled History of Marxism.

Mihailo Markovic was Head of the Department

of Philosophy and sociology at the Serbian Academy
of Sciences and Arts. Markovic’s special interest was
Logic, and like Adam Schaff in Poland, he called into
question the simplistic, Stalinist notions of
“contradiction” which were the cornerstone of Marxist orthodoxy
and bureaucratic double-speak.

Gajo Petrovic was Professor of Philosophy at Zagreb University, one of the

main theorists in the Praxis Group and long-time editor of the journal Praxis.

See also Karel Kosík's Man and Philosophy, 1965.

The Polish Left

As a member of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers Party

and a Professor Philosophy at the founding of the People's Republic,
Adam Schaff was the chief instrument for the imposition of
Soviet orthodoxy in social theory and philosophy in Poland.

In typically Polish fashion, however, Schaff bent to the pressure of

the strong, local Polish tradition of philosophy and adapted to
criticisms coming from below. Schaff was a logician, and began to
develop a criticism of the simplistic, Stalinist notions of dialectics.
As the dissident movement, with people like Jacek Kuron, became
stronger, it became more and more difficult to contain criticisms within the scope
of official Marxism. Through all the ups and downs of Polish history, Adam Schaff
has retained his position and continues to publish and teach.

S.D.S. and the New Left in America

The New Left in the United States emerged out of the student
movement, especially S.D.S. – Students for a Democratic Society.

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C. Wright Mills was not himself a student at the time, or participant

in this movement but he was able to give a Marxist voice to it, and his
books critising the “power elite” – later to be called the “military-
industrial complex” – sold by the million.

See The Power Elite, C. Wright Mills, 1956.

It was C. Wright Mills who definined the term “New Left,” when he
published an Open Letter to the New Left, addressed to the editors
of the New Left Review in Britain, but indirectly addressing the new
social movements in the U.S. and Europe.

C. Wright Mills died at the young age of 45, but his decidedly
“beatnik” persona was continued by the younger generation of the
New Left in America.

Marshall Berman found the works of the young Marx – including the
Communist Manifesto – spoke to him in a way that the dry tracts of orthodox
Marxism he had been exposed to before did not.

The New Left Review (England)

The New Left emerged in England from a very authoritative group

of historians and social-theorists, mainly around the formation of the
New Left Review, a magazine which continues to publish critical
social, cultural and political commentary.

E.P. Thompson resigned from the Communist Party as a result

of the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Uprising. In 1963, he
published Making of the English Working Class, one of the most
significant works of Marxist histriography of the 20th century, still
selling regularly to this day. Thompson consistently pursued a humanist critique of
Soviet communism, and travelled the world seeking to create links between the
peace movement in the West and the peace movement in the East.

Isaac Deutscher came to England as a Polish refugee, and is

most renowned for his monumental biography of Trotsky, which was
able to preserve and convey to millions Trotsky's achievement, while
still retaining sufficient distance to be able to make that assessment
objectively. The problem of the development of the socialist human
being lay at the centre of his life work.

Stuart Hall was a post-war Jamaican immigrant to

Britain, who managed against the odds to make it to
top of academia at the London School of Economics.

Stuart Hall took Marxist ideas into hitherto

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unchartered territory and initiated the idea of

“Cultural Studies” as an academic discipline and was
one of the initiators of “Post-colonial Studies.” He is a renowned
expert on the problems of cutural change and “multi-culturalism.”

Ralph Miliband was another Polish immigrant to make it to the

top in British academia. Miliband was a prolific publisher, translator
and writer.

Other Publicists and Sociologists

T.B. Bottomore and Maximilien Rubel have both published prodigiously,

being responsible for most of the publication of Marxist classics by the bourgeois
publishing houses.

Lucien Goldman is another sociologist with a prodigious output

of translations, collections, journals and original analyses, all with a
humanist and Marxist bent.

Eugene Kamenka is an Australian Marxist who was the first

writer after the rise of Stalin in the 1920s to make a systematic
investigation of Ethics from a Marxist perspective, publishing The
Ethical Foundations of Marxism in 1962.

Some of these writers are still alive and well, and most have been published to the
mass market by prestigious bourgeois publishers who enforce their copyrights. This
means that in most cases we are unable to reproduce their works on the Marxists
Internet Archive. In the main, these writers have produced their work in isolation
from the workers’ movement, but this does not ipso facto devalue or negate the
validity of their ideas. What it does represent is how the development of Marxism
has been fragmented by the division of labour in capitalist society, bringing about a
partial separation of the development of theory and the practice of working class
struggle.

For anti-humanist positions, see Socialism and Humanism and Part 2, by George
Novack 1959,
Marxism and Humanism, by Louis Althusser 1964, and
Humanism and Socialism, by Paul Mattick 1965.

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