Marxism's Class Paradox

The Basic Contradiction

“The communists have nothing to hide, said the Communist Manifesto. Nothing but the fact that they were bourgeois intellectuals.” — Alvin Gouldner, Against Fragmentation

A basic contradiction of Marxism is its inability to explain its own existence. Marxism has much to say about the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat with which it throws in its lot. Especially before Lenin, however, it has little to say about how the intellectuals who make this theory fit into its picture. If consciousness is determined by social being, as it teaches, how does Marxism account for the possibility of its own emergence? In Alvin Gouldner’s words, “how can the proletarian consciousness of Marxism have been generated by the bourgeois social being of its authors?”

Marxism may claim to be the consciousness of the working class, yet this perspective of proletarian communism materialized in the minds of well-to-do intellectuals. As Perry Anderson summarizes, “virtually all the major theorists of historical materialism to date, from Marx or Engels themselves to the Bolsheviks, from the leading figures of Austro-Marxism to those of Western Marxism, have been intellect­uals drawn from the possessing classes: more often than not, of higher rather than lower bourgeois origin.” There is a clear pattern: “Marx and Marxism,” in Gouldner’s words, “are the creations of a library-haunting, book-store-browsing, museum-loving and hence leisure-possessing academic intelligentsia.” And this incubation of Marxism in a bourgeois intellectual culture “at whose center there is the Western university” has remained the case throughout its history.

The class paradox at the base of Marxism would not pose the same theoretical problem for the idealistic socialisms it defines itself against. A utopian socialist would simply appeal to the truth or righteousness of their position and the power of reason and moral persuasion in convincing decent people of any class to embrace it. Yet it is Marxism’s materialistic scenario, premised not on sentimental appeals to justice, but rather class needs and interests, that makes it especially difficult for it to account for the revolutionary activity of non-revolutionary classes.

Considering the significance this dilemma poses for their theory, Marx and Engels “have surprisingly little to say about the radicalization of intellectuals in general, about the entire social stratum of which they are a part, about how that social stratum becomes involved with the proletariat, socialism, revolution, and what this might mean.” However, they do not ignore this contradiction altogether. At several points in their writings, they attempt to harmonize this theoretical problem, but as Gouldner notes, they do so “only hurriedly, en passant, as a kind of obligation to cover the topic; and the little they have to say is sharply anomalous with the main thrust of their own argument.”

In The German Ideology, they write of “the communist consciousness, which may, of course, arise among the other classes too through the contemplation of the [proletarian] situation.” The Communist Manifesto does slightly more to clarify the circumstance “when the class struggle nears the decisive hour,” and the dissolution of the existing society “assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class,” like that section of the nobility that earlier went over to the bourgeoisie.

Yet here again, they emphasize “contemplation” as the motivating factor, predicting that the class defectors will come, in particular, from that “portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.” As Gouldner questions, “It is striking how idealistic Marx and Engels’ account of the process is.” Although the entire ruling class is doomed by a revolutionary situation, only a “small section” of it joins “the class that holds the future in its hands.” Only the brighter intellectuals recognize the impending demise of their class and the rise of a new revolutionary class with which their future lies.

The paradox of why only certain intellectuals would join the revolutionary proletariat persists in Marx and Engels’ inconsistent explanation for this process, which oscillates between material and ideal factors. On one hand, they seem to imply that the radicalization of intellectuals is a pragmatic decision made by those savvy enough to recognize their historical situation and back the winning horse. But why, after all, isn’t the entire doomed ruling class impelled by self-interest to join the ascendant class? Surely, not only Hegelian intellectuals would feel the material incentives of a revolutionary “decisive hour.”

Moreover, why do so many of the academic intelligentsia take up the cause of Marxism and the perspective of the proletariat outside of revolutionary situations? The immediate prospect of proletarian revolution has not been strong for much of Marxism’s existence, yet this hasn’t suppressed its appeal to academics. Why would Marxism still primarily attract intellectuals, who do not feel compelled by a “decisive hour” to join the imminent winners of a class war.

The scenario Marx and Engels describe in The Communist Manifesto fails to explain the role of themselves and other Marxist theorists who did not switch alliances in the heat of impending revolution, but rather produced theoretical work that took part in shaping a revolutionary framework. “Marx correctly noted that some intellectuals went over to the proletariat,” as Gouldner argues, “but mistakenly assumed that they did this only in the final hours of the class struggle. He saw them only as responding to a prior dissolution of the class system, rather than as contributing importantly to it.” Lenin, to give one example, did not merely respond to a decisive hour so much as he helped create one.

On one hand, Marx and Engels portray the radicalized intelligentsia as making a calculating, even cynical decision to join the proletariat based on material self-interest. On the other, they present this class defection as a nobler result of their education, knowledge, and rationality as enlightened intellectuals “comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.” Their “communist consciousness” arising from “the contemplation of the [proletarian] situation” also seems to involve ethical factors. In this sense, they transcend their bourgeois social being not simply out of the immediate material incentives of a revolutionary “decisive hour,” but through the ideas they explore and develop in their hours of leisure as intellectuals.

Of course, this idealistic side of Marx and Engels’s paradoxical self-accounting raises obvious problems for their theory. In their materialist schema, how does the possession of education and theory make the difference in which members of the upper class join the other side? Implicit in their claims about enlightened intellectuals, as Gouldner infers, is “that higher education might transform consciousness in ways at variance with upper-class interests.” This is at odds, however, with their normal theoretical claims, which hold that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas,” that the class that controls the means of material production also controls the means of mental production. If this is the case, how does the system of higher education, an integral factory of that mental production, produce revolutionary consciousness?

Marxism’s inability to account, on its own terms, for the role of revolutionary intellectuals explains why its originators pass over this question with brief and unenlightening glosses. Marxism struggles to deal with the class origins of its theorists without in some way contradicting itself. As Gouldner summarizes the basic paradox:

The revolutionary intellectual is either (1) just another interest-pursuing egoist, and his revolutionary commitment and theory are therefore a disguise for that interest, or (2) he is truly an idealist who can transcend his interests. In the first case, revolutionary theory and Marxism itself become another “false consciousness” that can make no superior claim to truth or loyalty; in the second case, the facts acknowledged contradict the materialism premised by Marxist theory.

The mere presence of such contradictions does not invalidate Marxism. It merely brings us to the limits of its self-understanding, a dilemma that can be faced with a more thoroughgoing Marxism. Despite the proletariat’s central position in Marxist theory, a Marxist analysis of Marxism must question the self-satisfied myth that Marxism is the consciousness of the proletariat. Such a self-conception, as Gouldner argues, “is the false consciousness of cultural bourgeoisie who have been radicalized” in the pursuit of their own emancipation.

This is not in itself a fatal problem, but rather an opportunity for Marxism to clarify its own mystical consciousness to itself, “to recover its real class dimension and, surprisingly, with this, its rationality.” As Gouldner concludes, “acknowledging the special place of intellectuals in Marxism begins to lift the limits on Marx­ism’s own self-understanding and to deepen its potential for rationality.” This is exactly what we will do next by examining how Lenin’s vanguardism surfaces Marxism’s previously submerged class contradictions, while also assessing Gouldner’s related claim that, more than any proletarian consciousness, Marxism emerges as the concealed expression of a New Class of intellectuals.