Transcribed for the first time, ‘critical remarks’ from Karl Korsch on “Marxism”, a symposium by John MacMurray, John Middleton Murray, N.A. Holdaway and G.D.H. Cole published in 1935. The bulk of the review is devoted to a critique of N.A. Holdaway’s essay on the Marxist theory of value.

‘Marxism as a Religion’ by Karl Korsch from International Council Correspondence. Vol. 1 No. 9. June, 1935.

Critical remarks an “Marxism”, a symposium by John Macmurray, John Middleton Murry, N.A. Holdaway and G.D.H. Cole. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1935. English Edition: Chapman & Hall, Ltd. London.

All contributors to this book are agreed in emphasizing that Marxism is a “revolutionary theory”, a “revolutionary gospel”. But they don’t mean by that the real Marxism, nor do they mean a real change of the capitalist social order through the action of the proletarian class. Their “Marxism” is a religion, a vision, a revolutionary ideology, by means of which the sober and (as Cole says, p.237) ‘dull’ socialist labor movement is to be made more attractive and tasteful to the English workers, and especially to the petty-bourgeois. And it is assumed that those workers will still for a long while not be ready for and capable of revolutionary action.

I.

This tendency of the book comes to light just as clearly in the philosophical contributions of J.M. Murry and J. Macmurray, and in the economic analysis of capitalism by N.A. Holdaway as in the position of G.D.H. Cole and again J.M. Murry to the practical political questions of the present-day English and international labor movement. The theoretical transformation of the marxist doctrine from a theory of the revolutionary proletarian class-struggle into a mere “revolutionary ideology” serves the practical purpose of using Marxism for throwing a halo over a political effort whose direction is by no means revolutionary. In spite of all the mystical phraseology about the essential “identity of theory and practice” in the revolutionary “philosophy” of Marxism, the question for J.M. Murry and J. Macmurray is not one of better adapting the marxist doctrine to the needs of the workers’ practical class struggle. Their real concern lies in dissociating the marxist “philosophy” from its definite relation to the proletarian class-struggle and “supplementing” it with all sorts of other element mostly borrowed from the christian religion. And what do we have as the goal of this “Marxism” which has been transformed into a religious philosophy? Instead of a real change of the social surroundings, its task consists in taking a state of society which in fact already exists and bringing it into the consciousness of the people living in this society. The actual overthrow of the existing social order is to be replaced by a religious, philosophic and moral renovation of the inner human consciousness.

II.

In dealing with such “marxist” politicians as G.D.H. Cole and J.M. Murry there is no need of a critical analysis to prove that for them the “revolutionary marxist” ideology means only an instrument of vote-catching for the Labor Party. To Murry there is no doubt that the practical labor movement in England will still remain limited for at least thirty to forty years (206) to a struggle for democratic aims together with idealistic propaganda of ideals of freedom and religious-moral self-education of the individuals concerned. Cole, too, comes out flatly with the statement that a revolution on the part of the English workers is out of the range of vision, that the economic development of recent times has not strengthened but weakened the working class, which must, therefore, (because of its weakness!) be built up in future more on a political and less on a trade-union, industrial basis (236-7). The middle class, on the other hand, appears, according to Cole, in its natural development, predestined for fascism (221-22, 225), while according to Murry, it is not “as yet” in England definitely anti-democratic and may still find satisfaction for its planned-economy tendency in a parliamentary-democratic state capitalism built up by the Labor Party after the model of the Morrison Passenger Transport Board, or after the models furnished by the present “National Government” of Mr. MacDonald (190-192). The real sense of taking up with the Marxist theory consists for both in diverting this “new class” of the petite bourgeoisie discovered by Cole (how many times in the last four decades?) from its fascist tendency and making it more receptive to socialism. J.M. Murry goes so far as to represent the socialist movement of the future as an “essentially classless political organization”, whose “total Marxism” will be a “faith” and a “vision”, “as new and inspiring for the bourgeois as for the working man” (19-21). In reality, however, this fellow, who is never tired of describing himself as an “idealistic” and “impatient socialist” (203-3) and conceives the main virtue of Marxism to be that the “true Marxist” by means of Marxism kills off his egoistical “self” (207), accomplishes on this for very occasion, through the denial of a few incautious phrases from his earlier writings, through a pious obeisance to the coming strong man of the Labor Party (Herbert Morrison) and through a strict renunciation of all “sectarianism” (192, 207), his adhesion to that ultra-reformist present leadership of the Trade Unions and Labor Party which he has just denoted as the “last bulwark of the bourgeoisie” against the true and christian “revolutionary Marxism” preached by him (20).

The special need which drives this kind of labor politicians to bring about their transformation of the present English working-class socialism, in England of the year 1935, in the form of a turn to “Marxism” and, if such were possible, to “revolutionary Marxism”, is not further defined by Murry. On this point we have a more open and clear expression on the part of Cole. He is in a better position to afford openness here because, in spite of his skeptical attitude regarding any possible revolutionary intensification of the present working-class struggle, he is after all still striving for a certain degree of real change, in the form of sharpening and activizing of the present course of the official Labor Party and under certain circumstances does not regard it as wholly precluded. The Labor Party can and shall, in his opinion, the power, though of course along parliamentary paths, and will then make use of this power for the purpose, among others, of building up certain extra-parliamentary agencies “for the administration of the country on a socialist basis”, and it shall furthermore have the “full consciousness” (!) that its mission (!) does not consist merely in passing new laws but in “altering the entire social structure of the country” with a view to a “classless and equalitarian Society” (235-36). Supported on this concession to his revolutionary socialist conscience, he now declares quite plainly the real reasons for the usefulness of Marxism to the present-day English Labor Party. As soon as the Labor Party passes beyond the social reforms which are, quite without danger to capital and turns–not to a “serious attempt to establish a socialist system”, but even to “demands for social reforms that the capitalists cannot easily concede”, it “can no longer afford to be or to look moderate” (226). In order to avoid this “moderate appearance” and thus not to lose all credit, especially with the middle class, which is already going in for fascism after a manner, –to this end the Labor Party needs in its present fateful hour this “gospel for revolutionary enthusiasts who want to change the world” (238). And for the attainment of this noble purpose, Mr. Cole has no fear of bringing in still another revolutionist of note, the same one from whom, in his own revolutionary-syndicalist youthful period, he derived his romantic ardor. He quotes a splendid passage from the old American syndicalist of the I.W.W., Big Bill Haywood, in praise of revolutionary, sharp and persistent “thinking” (239). But he substitutes for the syndicalist, activist and terroristic thinking meant by Haywood his own “constructive and reasonable” thinking, which at the same time shall not, at any price, be or at least look like a “moderate” thinking (226).

III.

While J.M. Murry and J. Macmurray have furnished for the practical political tendency of the book what may be called the philosophical theory, the fourth contributor, N.A. Holdaway, contributes the economic theory, (123-178). It is only from the peculiar, self-selected task of this faculty of skeptically sober petty-bourgeois intellectuals, namely, that of imparting to the working class by means of the revolutionary marxist ideology the lacking ardor, that it is possible to understand the otherwise quite incomprehensible manner in which the economic theory of Marx is here unceremoniously treated. No reasonable, no modern Marxist would object if Mr. Holdaway had subjected the economic doctrines of Marx to “continual criticism in the light of developing processes in the material world” (178). One might also accept it gracefully if (as his friend Cole has occasionally expressed it) he had perceived in such a continual critical alteration of Marxism even the genuine task of the “non-orthodox Marxist”, that is, had limited his activity as a Marxist to breaking down Marxism in a marxist manner. But even from such a standpoint, a marxist “Analysis of Capitalism” and of its present final phase would have to convey to the reader a few marxist terms, concepts and statements in appropriate manner. When one criticises or makes a critical contribution to a theory in any other field of knowledge, it is after all usual to present a pertinent exposition of at least the basic doctrines of this criticised theory and not, in the name of this theory, in the place of its real content and the further development of this content, merely to bring onto the market one’s own improvised thoughts and formulations. In this book we are presented with something as marxist doctrine which philosophically, historically and in particular economically is connected with Marx’s thoughts only in loose manner or not at all. No reader, however much illuminated by the new “marxist philosophy” of Messrs. Murry, Macmurray & Co., could obtain from this ‘critical’ exposition a half-way clear idea of the marxian economics. And one must already be rather thoroughly versed in the marxist theory in order to recognize even a few fragments of the marxist doctrine behind the numerous misinterpretations, the false sequences, the disturbing additions and the witticisms which frequently go off into stupidity.

To show the confusion wrought by the critical Marxist Holdaway in the economic theory of Marx, and what comes of it, we take a few Examples:

As early as page 129 we learn that in feudal society even the exploiting classes (the feudal lords, spiritual and temporal, and their retainers, who by reason of their larger shares of the social product “exploited” the serfs) and likewise also in the early capitalist society the industrial “exploiters”, produced “values” in the marxian sense.

On page 132, the author fulfills the utopian dream of old Aristotle. He discovers in present-day capitalist reality, more accurately in the “boot and shoe industry”, the existence of machines that “work up raw material into a finished product without any human intervention at all”. What wonder if the traditional marxist doctrine of value is shaken in its foundations and stands in need of the guiding and helping band of Mr. Holdaway. “Every previous economic system,” he explains, “created consumers who were not creators; the capitalist system by its inherent necessity (which is the mother of inventions) creates creators who are not consumers, viz. machines” (134).

In the next place, the author discovers (apparently on the basis of a previous discovery of Cole’s) that “the Marxian Theory of Value is not an economic theory in the limited sense at all” (133). As a matter of fact, Marx has given in Das Kapital a profound and thorough economic analysis of the value relations of commodities in capitalist production. He has, besides (in the section on the “Fetishist Character of Commodities and its Mystery”) also historically and sociologically comprehended those relations as a material concealment of the social relations arising and developing between human beings in the process of production. Of this total achievement of the critical economist Marx, Holdaway completely omits (in accordance with the “philosophical” and “religious” tendency of his contribution, as of the whole book, directed to the arousing of enthusiasm!) the first half, the genuine, economic analysis, and holds only to the critical points, denoted by him as “philosophic”. The economic category of “value” thus becomes transformed into a metaphysical thing, of which one merely learns that it is somehow a “measure of exploitation” (132). In this application, the sense of the expression is quite unintelligible. It first becomes clear when one recalls that in Marx it is not “value” which serves as the “measure of exploitation”, but the rate of surplus value.

Holdaway’s next revelation consists in the discovery of a radical difference in the marxist theory between “value” and “price” (138). According to Marx, of course, the “price” of commodities is nothing other than their “value” expressed in money (exchange value). For various reasons, of which the most important does not appear until the third volume, it happens that between the magnitude of price and of value of the different commodities and commodity groups there is no direct agreement, nor can there be any in developed capitalist production. Many critics of Marx have therefore thought that Marx not wholly successful in Das Kapital in the economic derivation prices from value. Our author falls upon a brilliant, truly absurd, idea. Price, according to him, is something absolutely different from value and in its “modern form” its direct opposite (138-141). It is “essentially an individual relation” (140); more accurately, a form of competition between different individuals and human, groups, a measure of the “individual and group antagonisms within the capitalist class” (140). While in “value” we have the “unity” (sic!) between the exploiting and the exploited class, so in “price” we have “quite a different unity”, namely, the “unity of buyer and seller” on the commodity market (138). The struggle about prices expresses always (even as a struggle between capitalists and small producers in the early capitalist period!) a mere individual antagonism conflict and never a “mass-struggle” (139). It has nothing to do with the “relations between the capitalist class and the proletariat” (140). If, under the conditions of pre-capitalist production, value and price still tended to be more or less equivalent (140), in the capitalist epoch price tends more and more to be “absolutely divorced from Marxian value” (141). The transition from the pre-capitalist mode of production to capitalist commodity production and the further development of this mode of production is not, as in Marx, brought about through the medium of value, but through the variation of price from value (138-40).

This divorce of the price theory from the marxian “value” is made with a view to representing the economic development of capitalism undisturbed by value and surplus value and the related struggle of the classes in material production itself, that is, as an intra-capitalist affair, or as a struggle between the different competing capitalists and groups of capitalists over prices, a struggle taking place no longer within the sphere of production, but only in the sphere of exchange, on the commodity market. It is only occasionally, at certain critical points of time, namely, in the partial “revolutions” of the economic crises and finally “when all is fulfilled”, in the “revolutionary overturn which brings the capitalist epoch to its end” (142)–it is only then, from extra-economic, economically incomprehensible depths of an inner “organic growth” (135) that value breaks ecstatically into this intra-capitalist, economic development: “the forcible overthrow of price by value”.

Holdaway does not, however, accomplish his purpose. Through the radical divorce of price from value he has obscured the clear meaning of “value”, as given by Marx, for the operation and development of the capitalist mode of production. He has not succeeded, however, in finding for “price”, thus elevated to an independent economic category, economic determinations of its own. He has declared “value” to be an “extra-economic” category and robbed it of the economic qualities developed by Marx, transferring these qualities in mutilated form onto his “price”. Through this “critical” further development of the marxian “critique of political economy” he has destroyed not only the economic content of the marxian doctrine, but even its critical-revolutionary significance. In order to make this clear, we set the marxian original and Holdaway’s copy facing each other. The confrontation shows that the marxian formula is the unveiling of real mystery, discovery of a new economic insight and clarification of a practically momentous matter for the class struggle of the proletariat. Through Holdaway’s formula, on the contrary, a matter which is perfectly clear becomes mystified, with the result that we have neither the winning of a new theoretical insight, nor the expression of a practical class truth.

MARX treats as basic the relations springing directly from the material process of production in its capitalistic form (capitalist commodity production). These relations appear economically in the “value” of commodities.

HOLDAWAY treats as basic the relations arising on the market from the exchange (purchase and sale) of commodities. These relations appear economically in the “price” of commodities.

MARX. By the side of these basic relations (the “relations of production”) there are derivative relations which first come up in the sphere of exchange. These relations include the one between the owners of commodities who confront each other as sellers and buyers and who “by means of an act of will common to both, appropriate the other’s commodity in that they alienate their own”. This relation (the “contract”) is no longer an economic relation but a “legal or voluntary relation whose character is determined through the economic (value) relation itself”.

HOLDAWAY. The economic (price) relation is derived from the legal or voluntary relation (the “contract”).

MARX. In “value” appears a relation of persons which is peculiar to the capitalist process of production, namely, the reduction of private labors which are interdependent but carried on independently of each other to their socially proportional measure of labor time (the regulation of the social division of labor) as a relation between the value of one commodity and the value of other commodities.

HOLDAWAY. In “price appears a relation of persons which belongs to the process of exchange, namely the “unity of buyers and sellers” which is brought about in the sale of the commodity on the market, as a relation between “a commodity and its money form”.

MARX. The value relation of commodities is a “crazy” expression for the real relation which it signifies, an expression which has need of a scientific correction. It is at the same time a “socially valid, hence objective conception” for the productive relations of a certain social mode of production (commodity production). The (social) validity of this conception is limited to an historical epoch (the epoch of bourgeois society).

HOLDAWAY. The price relation of commodities is the “inverted form” in which a relation appears to “us” which is something different in objective reality. This inversion occurs in connection with every purchase and sale of commodities, and has no connection with a determinate form of production or with a determinate historical epoch.

MARX To that extent the value relation of commodities is not a mere appearance which would be dissipated by the discovery of the actual state of affairs concealed beneath it, but would still remain valid for those who are entangled in the relations of commodity production. It first disappears contemporaneously with the abolition of capitalist commodity production through the proletarian revolution and the further development to the classless communist society.

HOLDAWAY. To that extent the price relation of commodities appears as a mere subjective deception; through the discovery of the objective state of affairs lying at bottom, it can be done away with also by purely theoretical means.

MARX. The value relation of commodities (the commodity form of products in the capitalist mode of production) contains a real mystery.

“The mysteriousness of the commodity form consists in the fact that it reflects to people the social characters of their own labor as concrete characters of the labor products themselves, as social, natural qualities of these things, hence also the social relation of the producers to the total labor as a social relation of objects which exists outside of them.”

HOLDAWAY. That “the commodities do not themselves go to market and cannot exchange themselves”, hence must be exchanged on the market by actual human beings, is an obvious circumstance known to everyone.

MARX. The unveiling of this mystery (the doing away with “commodity fetishism”) is a scientific discovery. The reality concealed behind “value” is thus made visible and palpable. By means of a statement regarding a relation existing between real things (the relation of the value of different commodities) a certain matter of fact (the labor time expended on different products of human labor) is properly made clear.

HOLDAWAY. No new theoretical insight is won by stating once more this fact which is well known anyhow. By the assertion that in the “price” of commodities the “unity of buyer and seller” is manifested also in “inverted form”, a connection which is clear in itself is only obscured artificially. One fails to see what rational meaning can be bound up with the definition of price as a relation between “a commodity and its monetary form” (i.e. between a thing and its form). It is equally incomprehensible how the “unity of buyer and seller” established on the market must come to expression precisely by means of a statement regarding the price of a commodity.

MARX. This discovery has practical importance for the class struggle; the wage workers, hitherto rating as mere sellers of a special commodity (their labor power) by the side of other sellers of commodities, recognize themselves as the class of the real producers, (suppressed and exploited by the non-producers) of all the social products exchanged on the capitalist market. Through their conscious action as a class they break down the barriers set to the capitalist mode of production by the condition of commodity production and they set in the place of the (unconscious) regulation of the social process through the law of value the conscious and planned direct control of production thru the freely associated human beings.

HOLDAWAY. Nor is any practical class truth thereby proclaimed. The relation established between the buyers and sellers of the commodity labor-power on the capitalist “labor market” remains, like all other relations of the sellers and buyers of commodities, as “essentially individual” relation of the human beings or “human groups” competing for the sale of their commodities. It has no class character.

MARX. The rational character of the value formula continues to exist in the further development of the value formula to the price formula; that is, in the expression of the value of all commodities in a special commodity, money. Money is a commodity. It makes its appearance as such even in pre-capitalist epochs. It develops, for the first time, however, into the general commodity (within the circulation of each country and on the world market) in the period of capitalist commodity production The abolition of the commodity character of money takes place simultaneously with the abolition of capitalist commodity production and of money through the proletarian revolution and the further development to the classless communist society.

HOLDAWAY. The irrational character of the definition of price as a relation between “a commodity and its money form” becomes especially glaring through the denial of the commodity nature of money. Money was originally a commodity. It developed as such even in pre-capitalist epochs into the general commodity. It loses in the capitalist epoch (in a “dialectical negation” of that previous development) the character of a commodity and attains its capitalist final form as inconvertible paper money. The “break-through of the productive forces” through the barriers set for them in capitalist commodity production by the (among other things) commodity nature of money takes place without proletarian revolution, through an increase of money by way of inflation (164).

Like the development of the commodity and of money, so also the general development of capitalism closes, in Holdaway’s exposition, not with the abolition of the capitalist mode of production through the proletarian revolution, but with the transition to state capitalism, to capitalist “planned economy” and to fascist enslavement of the workers. He declares that “the final phase of the centralization of capital shows the appearance of new qualities” (171), and then treats of state capitalism, “planned” national economy, war and nationalism. He thinks that the workers will cease to sell their labor-power to the capitalists and will sink into a new form of slavery, “not in the wage-slavery which has always been their lot, but in a bondage which assumes their disposability, not by individual owners, but by the state” (172). Thus this ‘marxist’ analysis, which set out to portray the “end of capitalism”, ends with the prospect for the new beginning of a more virulent capitalism. In this way this ‘economic’ contribution, as well, fits harmoniously into the general tendency of the book. Its authors, who were selected for the purpose of imparting to the socialist movement, hard pressed by fascism, a higher ardor through the confession of faith in a so-called “revolutionary Marxism”, end with this: that today still theoretically and unconsciously, tomorrow perhaps consciously and practically, they capitulate before the might of fascism or yield to what has already in secret long been felt as its irresistible seduction.

Living Marxism was the successor to The International Council Correspondence. The International Council Correspondence was a left/council communist magazine published in Chicago by the United Workers Party, a split from the Proletarian Party. Published monthly from 1934 to 1938 and edited by Paul Mattick, in 1938, it changed its name to Living Marxism and again to New Essays in 1942. Karl Korsch, Anton Pannekoek, Max Nomad, Daniel Guérin, Otto Rühle, Dwight Macdonald and Victor Serge also were contributors.

PDF of full issue: https://files.libcom.org/files/ICC%20Vol%201%20No%209.pdf