Herbert Marcuse
Reason & Revolution
Part II, The Rise of Social Theory

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*Written:* 1941
*Source:* Reason & Revolution.

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      INTRODUCTION
      From Philosophy to Social Theory

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THE transition from philosophy to the domain of state and society had
been an intrinsic part of Hegel?s system. His basic philosophic ideas
had fulfilled themselves in the specific historical form that state and
society had assumed, and the latter became central to a new theoretical
interest. Philosophy had in this way devolved upon social theory. To
understand the impact of Hegel?s philosophy on subsequent social theory,
we must deviate from the usual explanation.

The traditional account of the post-history of Hegelian philosophy
begins by pointing to the fact that the Hegelian school after Hegel?s
death split into a right and a left wing. The right wing, consisting of
Michelet, Göschel, Johann Eduard Erdmann, Gabler, and Rosenkranz, to
name only the most representative thinkers of this group, took up and
elaborated the conservative trends in the Hegelian system, particularly
in the Logic, Metaphysic and the Philosophies of Right and of Religion.
The left wing, made up of David Friedrich Strauss, Edgar and Bruno
Bauer, Feuerbach, and Ciszkowski, among others, developed the critical
tendencies in Hegel, beginning this with a historical interpretation of
religion. This latter group came into greater and greater social and
political conflict with the Restoration and ended either in out-and-out
socialism and anarchism, or in a liberalism of the petty-bourgeois stamp.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the influence of Hegelianism
was almost dead. It got its rebirth in the last decades of the century
in British Hegelianism (Green, Bradley, Bosanquet) and, later still,
gained a new political impetus in Italy, where the interpretation of
Hegel was used as a preparation for Fascism.

In a totally different form, the Hegelian dialectic also became an
integral part of Marxian theory and its Leninist interpretation. Apart
from these main lines, certain of Hegel?s concepts found employment in
sociology (in Lorenz von Stein?s work, for example), in jurisprudence
(the historical school; Lasalle) and in the field of history (Droysen,
Ranke).

Such an account as this, though formally accurate, is a little too
schematic, and obliterates certain important distinctions. The
historical heritage of Hegel?s philosophy, for instance, did not pass to
the ?Hegelians? (neither of the right nor of the left)-they were not the
ones who kept alive the true content of this philosophy. The critical
tendencies of the Hegelian philosophy, rather, were taken over by, and
continued in, the Marxian social theory, while, in all other aspects,
the history of Hegelianism became the history of a struggle against
Hegel in which he was used as a symbol for all that the new intellectual
(and to a considerable extent even the practical political) efforts opposed.

Hegel?s system brings to a close the entire epoch in modern philosophy
that had begun with Descartes and had embodied the basic ideas of modern
society. Hegel was the last to interpret the world as reason, subjecting
nature and history alike to the standards of thought and freedom. At the
same time, he recognised the social and political order men had achieved
as the basis on which reason had to be realised. His system brought
philosophy to the threshold of its negation and thus constituted the
sole link between the old and the new form of critical theory, between
philosophy and social theory.

Before we attempt to show how the inner workings of Western philosophy
necessitated the transition to the critical theory of society, we must
indicate the way in which the historical efforts that distinguish the
modern era entered into and shaped the philosophic interest. The social
forces at work in this historical surge used philosophy in its
predominantly rationalistic form, and the idea of reason might well
serve again as the starting point for our discussion.

Beginning with the seventeenth century, philosophy had quite definitely
absorbed the principles of the rising middle class. Reason was the
critical slogan of this class, with which it fought all who hampered its
political and economic development. The term saw service in the war of
science and philosophy against the Church, in the attack of the French
Enlightenment on absolutism, and in the debate between liberalism and
mercantilism. No clear-cut definition of reason, and no single meaning
for it, ran through these periods. Its meaning changed with the changing
position of the middle class. We shall try to gather up its essential
elements and evaluate its varying historical impact.

The idea of reason is not necessarily anti-religious. Reason allows the
possibility that the world might be the creature of God and that its
order might be divine and purposive, but this should not exclude man?s
right to mould it in accordance with his needs and knowledge. The
meaning of the world as rational implied, first, that it could be
comprehended and changed by man?s knowingful action. Nature was regarded
as rational in its very structure, with subject and object meeting in
the medium of reason.

Secondly, human reason, it was explained, is not once and for all
restricted to a pre-established order, whether social or otherwise. The
multitude of talents that man possesses all originate and develop in
history, and he may employ them in many ways for the best possible
satisfaction of his desires. Satisfaction itself will depend on the
extent of his control over nature and society. The standard of reason
was ultimate in this wide range of control. That is to say, nature and
society alike were to be organised so that existing subjective and
objective endowments freely unfolded. Bad organisation in society was to
a considerable extent held responsible for the harmful and iniquitous
forms that institutions had assumed. With the advance towards a rational
social order, these, it was held, would lose their vitiating character.
Man would by education become a rational being in a rational world. The
completion of the process would see the laws of his individual and
social life all derived from his own autonomous judgment. The
realisation of reason thus implied an end to all external authority such
as set man?s existence at odds with the standards of free thought.

Thirdly, reason involves universality. For, the emphasis on reason
declares that man?s acts are those of a /thinking/ subject guided by
conceptual knowledge. With concepts as his instruments, the thinking
subject can penetrate the contingencies and recondite devices of the
world and reach universal and necessary laws that govern and order the
infinitude of individual objects. He thus discovers potentialities that
are common to multitudes of particulars, potentialities that will
explain the changing forms of things and dictate the range and direction
of their course. Universal concepts will become the organon of a
practice that alters the world. They might arise only through this
practice and their content might change with its progress, but they will
not depend on chance. Genuine abstraction is not arbitrary, nor is it
the product of free imagination; it is strictly determined by the
objective structure of reality.

The universal is as real as the particular; it only exists in a
different form, namely, as force, /dynamis/, potentiality.

Fourthly, thought unites the manifold not only of the natural but of the
socio-historical world. The subject of thought, the source of conceptual
universality, is one and the same in all men. The specific contents of
universal concepts and their connotations may vary, but the thinking ego
that is their source is a totality of pure acts, uniform in all thinking
subjects. To say, then, that the rationality of the thinking subject is
the ultimate basis for the rational organisation of society is, in the
last analysis, to recognise the essential equality of all men. Moreover,
the thinking subject, as the creator of universal concepts, is
necessarily free, and its freedom is the very essence of subjectivity.
The mark of this essential freedom is the fact that the thinking subject
is not chained to the immediately given forms of being, but is capable
of transcending them and changing them in line with his concepts. The
freedom of the thinking subject, in turn, involves his moral and
practical freedom. For, the truth he envisions is not an object for
passive contemplation, but an objective potentiality calling for
realisation. The idea of reason implies the freedom to act according to
reason.

Fifthly, this freedom to act according to reason was regarded as
exercised in the practice of natural science. A mastery of nature and of
its recently unearthed resources and dimensions was a requisite of the
new process of production that strove to transform the world into a huge
commodity market. The idea of reason came under the sway of technical
progress, and the experimental method was seen as the model of rational
activity, that is, as a procedure that alters the world so that its
inherent potencies become free and actual. Modern rationalism, as a
result, had a tendency to pattern individual as well as social life on
the model of nature. We point, for instance, to Descartes?s mechanistic
philosophy, Hobbes?s materialist political thought, Spinoza?s
mathematical ethics, and Leibniz?s monadology. The human world was
presented as governed by objective laws, analogous or even identical
with the laws of nature, and society was set forth as an objective
entity more or less unyielding to subjective desires and goals. Men
believed their relations to each other to result from objective laws
that operate with the necessity of physical laws, and their freedom to
consist in adapting their private existence to this necessity. A
strikingly conformist scepticism thus accompanied the development of
modern rationalism. The more reason triumphed in technology and natural
science, the more reluctantly did it call for freedom in man?s social
life. Under the pressure of this process, the critical and ideal
elements slowly vanished and took refuge in heretical and oppositional
doctrines (for example, in atheistic materialism during the French
Enlightenment). The representative philosophers of the middle class
(particularly Leibniz, Kant, and Fichte) reconciled their philosophical
rationalism with the flagrant irrationality of the prevailing social
relations, and inverted human reason and freedom so that they became
ramparts of the isolated soul or mind, internal phenomena quite
compatible with external realities, even if these contradicted reason
and freedom.

We have already indicated the motives that prompted Hegel to break with
the tendency of introversion and to proclaim the realisation of reason
in and through given social and political institutions. We have stressed
the role of the dialectic in the process that brought philosophy to
grips with social reality. It resulted in the dissolution of the
harmonious world of fixed objects posited by common sense and in the
recognition that the truth philosophy sought was a totality of pervasive
contradictions. Philosophical concepts now came to reflect the actual
movement of reality, but since they were themselves patterned on its
social content, they stopped where the content stopped, that is, in the
state that governed civil society, while the ideas and values that
pointed beyond this social system were stowed away in the realm of the
absolute mind, in the system of dialectical philosophy.

The method, however, that operated in this system reached farther than
the concepts that brought it to a conclusion. Through the dialectic,
history had been made part of the very content of reason. Hegel had
demonstrated that the material and intellectual powers of mankind had
developed far enough to call upon man?s social and political practice to
realise reason. Philosophy itself thus made direct application to social
theory and practice, not as to some external force but as to its
legitimate heir. If there was to be any progress beyond this philosophy,
it had to be an advance beyond philosophy itself and, at the same time,
beyond the social and political order to which philosophy had tied its fate.

This is the intrinsic connection that compels us to abandon
chronological order and to discuss the foundations of Marxian theory
before dealing with the early French and German sociology. The impact of
the Hegelian philosophy upon social theory, and the specific function of
modern social theory cannot be understood except from-the fully unfolded
form of Hegel?s philosophy and its critical tendencies, as they went
over to Marxian theory.


    I The Foundations of the Dialectical Theory of Society


        1. The Negation of Philosophy

THE transition from Hegel to Marx is, in all respects, a transition to
an essentially different order of truth, not to be interpreted in terms
of philosophy. We shall see that all the philosophical concepts of
Marxian theory are social and economic categories, whereas Hegel?s
social and economic categories are all philosophical concepts. Even
Marx?s early writings are not philosophical. They express the negation
of philosophy, though they still do so in philosophical language. To be
sure, several of Hegel?s fundamental concepts crop up in the development
from Hegel to Feuerbach to Marx, but the approach to Marxian theory
cannot be made by showing the metamorphosis of old philosophical
categories. Every single concept in the Marxian theory has a materially
different foundation, just as the new theory has a new conceptual-
structure and framework that cannot be derived from preceding theories.

As a first approach to the problem, we may say that in Hegel?s system
all categories terminate in the existing order, while in Marx?s they
refer to the negation of this order. They aim at a new form of society
even when describing its current form. Essentially they address
themselves to a truth to be had only through the abolition of civil
society. Marx?s theory is a ?critique? in the sense that all concepts
are an indictment of the totality of the existing order.

Marx considered Hegel?s philosophy to be the most advanced and
comprehensive statement of bourgeois principles. The German middle class
of Hegel?s day had not yet reached the level of economic and political
power held by the middle classes of the western European nations.
Hegel?s system therefore unfolded and completed ?in thought? all those
bourgeois principles (completed ?in reality? in other Western nations)
that were not yet part of social reality. It made reason the sole
universal standard of society; it recognised the role of abstract labor
in integrating divergent individual interests into a unified ?system of
wants?; it discovered the revolutionary implications of the liberalist
ideas of freedom and equality; it described the history of civil society
as the history of the irreconcilable antagonisms inherent in this social
order.

Marx lays particular stress on the decisive contributions of Hegel?s
concept of labor. Hegel had said that the division of labor and the
general interdependence of individual labor in the system of wants alike
determine the system of state and society. Moreover, the process of
labor likewise determines the development of consciousness. The ?life
and death struggle? between master and servant opens the path to
self-conscious freedom.

Furthermore, we must recall that Hegel?s philosophy rests upon a
specific interpretation of the subject-object relation. The traditional
epistemological antagonism between subject (consciousness) and object,
Hegel makes into a reflection of a definite historical antagonism. The
object first appears as an object of desire, something to be worked up
and appropriated in order to satisfy a human want. In the course of the
appropriation, the object becomes manifest as ?the otherness? of man.
Man is not ?with himself? when he deals with the objects of his desire
and labor, but is dependent on an external power. He has to cope with
nature, chance, and the interests of other proprietors. Development
beyond this point of the relation between consciousness and the
objective world is a social process. It leads first to the total
?estrangement? of consciousness; man is overpowered by things he has
himself made. The realisation of reason therefore implies the overcoming
of this estrangement, the establishment of a condition in which the
subject knows and possesses itself in all its objects.

This demonstration of the role of labor, and of the process of
reification and its abolition, is, Marx declares, the greatest
achievement of Hegel?s /Phenomenology of Mind/. But the weight of the
demonstration is lost. For, Hegel makes the claim that the unity of
subject and object has already been consummated and the process of
reification overcome. The antagonisms of civil society are set at rest
in his monarchic state, and all contradictions are finally reconciled in
the realm of thought or the absolute mind.

Did ?the truth? actually coincide with the given social and political
order? Had history, then, discharged theory from any need to transcend
the given system of life in society? Hegel?s affirmative answer rested
on the assumption that social and political forms had become adequate to
the principles of reason, so that the highest potentialities of man
could be developed through a development of existing social forms. His
conclusion implied a decisive change in the relation between reality and
theory: reality was held to coincide with theory. In the form Hegel
finally gave it, theory, the adequate repository of the truth, seemed to
give welcome to the facts as they were and hailed them as conforming to
reason.

The truth, Hegel maintained, is a whole that must be present in every
single element, so that if one material element or fact cannot be
connected with the process of reason, the truth of the whole is
destroyed. Marx said there was such an element-the proletariat. The
existence of the proletariat contradicts the alleged reality of reason,
for it sets before us an entire class that gives proof of the very
negation of reason. The lot of the proletariat is no fulfilment of human
potentialities, but the reverse. If property constitutes the first
endowment of a free person, the proletarian is neither free nor a
person, for he possesses no property. If the exercises of the absolute
mind, art, religion, and philosophy, constitute man?s essence, the
proletarian is forever severed from his essence, for his existence
permits him no time to indulge in these activities.

Furthermore, the existence of the proletariat vitiates more than just
the rational society of Hegel?s /Philosophy/ /of Right; /it vitiates the
whole of bourgeois society. The proletariat originates in the labor
process and is the actual performer or subject of labor in this society.
Labor, however, as Hegel himself showed, determines the essence of man
and the social form it takes. If the existence of the proletariat, then,
bears witness to ?the complete loss of man, I and this loss results from
the mode of labor on which civil society is founded, the society is
vicious in its entirety and the proletariat expresses a total
negativity: ?universal suffering? and ?universal injustice.? The reality
of reason, right, and freedom then turns into the reality of falsehood,
injustice and bondage.

The existence of the proletariat thus gives living witness to the fact
that the truth has not been realised. History and social reality
themselves thus ?negate? philosophy. The critique of society cannot be
carried through by philosophical doctrine, but becomes the task of
socio-historical practice.

Before we outline the development of Marxian theory, we have to
distinguish it from the other contemporary forms that were built on ?the
negation of philosophy.? The deep surge of conviction that philosophy
had come to an end colored the first decades after Hegel?s death. The
assurance spread that the history of thought had reached a decisive turn
and that there was only one medium left in which ?the truth? could be
found and put into operation, namely, man?s concrete material existence.
Philosophical structures had hitherto domiciled ?the truth,? setting it
apart from the historical struggle of men, in the form of a complex of
abstract, transcendental principles. Now, however, man?s emancipation
could become man?s own work, the goal of his self-conscious practice.
The true-being, reason, and the free subject could now be transformed
into historical realities. Hegel?s successors accordingly exalted the
?negation of philosophy? as ?the realisation of God? through the
deification of man (Feuerbach), as ?the realisation of philosophy?
(Feuerbach <../../../../../glossary/people/f/e.htm#feuerbach-ludwig>,
Marx), and as the fulfilment of the ?universal essence? of man
(Feuerbach, Marx).


        2. Kierkegaard

Who and what will fulfil the essence of man? Who will realise
philosophy? The different answers to these questions exhaust the trends
of post-Hegelian philosophy. Two general types may be distinguished. The
first, represented by Feuerbach and Kierkegaard
<../../../../../glossary/people/k/i.htm#kierkegaard-soren>, seizes upon
the isolated individual; the second, represented by Marx, penetrates to
the origins of the individual in the process of social labor and shows
how the latter process is the basis of man?s liberation.

Hegel had demonstrated that the fullest existence of the individual is
consummated in his social life. Critical employment of the dialectical
method tended to disclose that individual freedom presupposes a free
society, and that the true liberation of the individual therefore
requires the liberation of society. Fixation on the individual alone
would thus amount to adopting an abstract approach, such as Hegel
himself set aside. Feuerbach?s materialism and Kierkegaard?s
existentialism, though they embody many traits of a deep-rooted social
theory, do not get beyond earlier philosophical and religious approaches
to the problem. The Marxian theory, on the other hand, focuses down as a
critical theory of society and breaks with the traditional formulations
and trends.

Kierkegaard?s individualistic interpretation of ?the negation of
philosophy? inevitably developed a fierce opposition to Western
rationalism. Rationalism was essentially universalistic, as we have
shown, with reason resident in the thinking ego and in the objective
mind. The truth was lodged either in the universal ?pure reason?, which
was untouched by the circumstances of individual life, or in the
universal mind, which could flourish though individuals might suffer and
die. Man?s material happiness was deserted in both cases, by the
introversion of reason as well as by its premature adequation to the
world as it is.

Rationalist philosophy
<../../../../../glossary/terms/r/a.htm#rationalism>, the individualists
contended, was not concerned with man?s actual needs and longings.
Though it claimed to respond to his true interests, it gave no answer to
his simple quest for happiness. It could not help him in the concrete
decisions he constantly had to make. If, as the rationalists maintained,
the real unique existence of the individual (which could never be
reduced to a universal) was not the primary subject matter of
philosophy, and the truth could not be found in or related to this
unique existence, all philosophical efforts were superfluous, nay,
dangerous. ...

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    II The Foundations of Positivism and the Rise of Sociology


        1. Positive and Negative Philosophy

IN the decade following Hegel?s death, European thought entered an era
of ?positivism.? This positivism
<../../../../../glossary/terms/p/o.htm#positivism> announced itself as
the system of /positive philosophy, /taking a form quite different from
that which later positivism assumed. Comte
<../../../../../glossary/people/c/o.htm#comte-auguste>?s /Cours de
philosophie positive /was published between 1830 and 1842, Stahl?s
positive philosophy of the state between 1830 and 1837, and Schelling
<../../../../../glossary/people/s/c.htm#schelling-friedrich> began in
1841 <../../../hegel/help/1841.htm> his Berlin lectures on the /positive
Philosophie /that he had been elaborating ever since 1827.

While there can be no doubt about Comte?s contribution to positivism
(Comte himself derived the positivistic method from the foundations of
positive philosophy), it may seem preposterous to relate Schelling?s and
Stahl?s positive philosophy to that movement. Was Schelling not an
exponent of metaphysics in its most transcendent form, and did Stahl not
expound a religious theory of the state? True, Stahl is recognised as a
representative of positivism in legal philosophy, but what has
Schelling?s philosophy of mythology and revelation-which furnished some
basic concepts for Stahl?s doctrine-to do with positivism?

We find, however, in Schelling?s /Philosophie der Offenbarung/ the
opinion that the traditional metaphysics, since it was occupied only
with the notion of things and their pure essence, could not get at their
actual existence and thus could not provide real knowledge. In contrast,
Schelling?s philosophy aims at the truly actual and existent, and by
that token claims to be ?positive.? He raises the question whether the
rationalistic metaphysics was not a purely ? negative
<../../../../../glossary/terms/n/e.htm#negation>? philosophy, and
whether, following Kant?s destruction of this metaphysics, ?the positive
should not now organise itself, free and independent of the former, into
a science of its own.? Moreover, in 1827, at the conclusion of his
lectures on the history of modern philosophy, Schelling undertook to
justify the emphasis laid upon experience by the British and French
philosophers and defended this empiricism against its German foes. He
went so far as to declare that, ?if we had only a choice between
empiricism and the oppressive apriorism [/Denknotwendigkeiten/] of an
extreme rationalism, no free mind would hesitate to decide for
empiricism.? He ended by stating that the great task German philosophy
would have would be to overcome aprioristic metaphysics through a
?positive system, which would finally transform philosophy into a true
?science of experience.?

In its fundamental aspects, Schelling?s positive philosophy is certainly
greatly different from Comte?s. The ?positives,? to Comte, are the
matters of fact of observation, while Schelling stresses that
?experience? is not limited to the facts of outer and inner sense. Comte
is oriented to physical science and to the necessary laws that govern
all reality, while Schelling attempts to expound a ?philosophy of
freedom? and maintains that free creative activity is the ultimate
matter of fact of experience. Nevertheless, despite these essential
differences, there is a common tendency in both philosophies to counter
the sway of apriorism and to restore the authority of experience.

This common tendency might best be understood by considering what the
new positive philosophy was directed against. Positive philosophy was a
conscious reaction against the critical and destructive tendencies of
French and German rationalism, a reaction that was particularly bitter
in Germany. Because of its critical tendencies, the Hegelian system was
designated as /?negative philosophy.? /Its contemporaries recognised
that the principles Hegel enunciated in his philosophy led him ?to a
critique of everything that was hitherto held to be the objective
truth.? His philosophy ?negated?-namely, it repudiated any irrational
and unreasonable reality. The reaction saw a challenge to the existing
order in Hegel?s attempt to measure reality according to the standards
of autonomous reason. Negative philosophy, it was claimed, tries for the
potentialities of things, but is incapable of knowing their reality. It
stops short at their ?logical forms? and never reaches their actual
content, which is not deducible from these forms. As a result, so the
critique of Hegel ran, the negative philosophy can neither explain nor
justify things as they are. This led to the most fundamental objection
of all, that negative philosophy, because of its conceptual make-up,
?negates? things as they are. The matters of fact that make up the given
state of affairs, when viewed in the light of reason, become negative,
limited, transitory - they become perishing forms within a comprehensive
process that leads beyond them. The Hegelian dialectic was seen as the
prototype of all destructive negations of the given, for in it every
immediately given form passes into its opposite and attains its true
content only by so doing. This kind of philosophy, the critics said,
denies to the given the dignity of the real; it contains ?the principle
of revolution? (Stahl said). Hegel?s statement that the real is rational
was understood to mean that only the rational is real.

Positive philosophy made its counter-attack against critical rationalism
on two fronts. Comte fought against the French form of negative
philosophy, against the heritage of Descartes
<../../../../../glossary/people/d/e.htm#descartes-rene> and the
Enlightenment. In Germany, the struggle was directed against Hegel?s
system. Schelling received an express commission from Frederick William
IV to destroy the dragon seed? of Hegelianism, while Stahl, another
anti-Hegelian, became the philosophic spokesman of the Prussian monarchy
in 1840. German political leaders clearly recognised that Hegel?s
philosophy, far from justifying the state in the concrete shape it had
taken, rather contained an instrument for its destruction. Within this
situation, positive philosophy offered itself as the appropriate
ideological saviour.

The history of post-Hegelian thought is characterised by this twofold
thrust of positive philosophy, which we have just summarised. [In the
following discussion, we shall disregard Schelling?s positive
philosophy, since it had no relevance to the development of social
thought and influenced the political philosophy only through the use
which Stahl made of it.] Positive philosophy was supposed to overcome
negative philosophy in its entirety, that is, to abolish any
subordinating of reality to transcendental reason. Moreover, it was to
teach men to view and study the phenomena of their world as neutral
objects governed by universally valid laws. This tendency became
particularly important in social and political philosophy. Hegel had
considered society and the state to be the historical work of man and
interpreted them under the aspect of freedom; in contrast, positive
philosophy studied the social realities after the pattern of nature and
under the aspect of objective necessity. The independence of matters of
fact was to be preserved, and reasoning was to be directed to an
acceptance of the given. In this way positive philosophy aimed to
counteract the critical process involved in the philosophical ?negating?
of the given, and to restore to facts the dignity of the positive.

This is the point at which the connection between positive philosophy
and positivism (in the modern sense of the term) becomes clear. Their
common feature, apart from their joint struggle against metaphysical
apriorism, is the orientation of thought to matters of fact and the
elevation of experience to the ultimate in knowledge.

The positivist method certainly destroyed many theological and
metaphysical illusions and promoted the march of free thought,
especially in the natural sciences. The positivistic attack on
transcendent philosophy was reinforced through great strides in these
sciences around the first half of the last century. Under the impact of
the new scientific temper positivism could claim, as Comte put it, to be
the philosophic integration of human knowledge; the integration was to
come through the universal application of the scientific method and
through excluding all objectives -that, in the last analysis, could not
be verified by observation.

The positivistic opposition to the principle that the matters of fact of
experience have to be justified before the court of reason, however,
prevented the interpretation of these ?data? in terms of a comprehensive
/critique of the given itself. /Such a criticism no longer had a place
in science. In the end, positive philosophy facilitated the surrender of
thought to everything that existed and manifested the power to persist
in experience. Comte explicitly stated that the term ?positive? by which
he designated his philosophy implied educating men to take a positive
attitude towards the prevailing state of affairs. Positive philosophy
was going to affirm the existing order against those who asserted the
need for ?negating? it. We shall see that Comte and Stahl emphatically
stressed this implication of their work. The political alms thus
expressed link the positive philosophy with the doctrines of the French
counter-revolution: Comte was influenced by De Maistre, Stahl by Burke.

Modern social theory got its greatest impetus from positivism during the
nineteenth century. Sociology originated in this positivism and through
its influence developed into an independent empirical science. Before we
continue this line of analysis, however, we must briefly consider the
trend in social theory exemplified by the so-called early French
socialists, who had different roots from those of the positivists and
who led in another direction, although, in their beginnings, they
associated themselves with the positivist position.

The early French socialists found the decisive motives for their
doctrines in the class conflicts which conditioned the after-history of
the French Revolution. Industry made great strides, the first socialist
stirrings were felt, the proletariat began to consolidate. The social
and economic conditions that prevailed were seen by these thinkers to
constitute the real basis of the historical process. Saint-Simon
<../../../../../glossary/people/s/a.htm#st-simon> and Fourier
<../../../../../glossary/people/f/o.htm#fourier-francois> focused their
theoretical implements upon the totality of these conditions, thus
making society, in the modern sense of the word, the object upon which
their theory worked. Sismondi concluded that the economic antagonisms of
capitalism were the structural laws of modern society; Proudhon saw
society as a system of contradictions. A number of English writers,
beginning in 1821, carried their analyses of capitalism so far that they
saw the class struggles as the driving motor of social development.?

All these doctrines aimed at a critique of the prevailing social forms,
with the fundamental concepts serving as instruments for transforming
and not for stabilising or justifying the given order.

Between the positivist and the critical streams, however, there lay a
connecting link in the form of a systematic attempt to fuse the
principle of class struggle with the idea of objective scientific
sociology. Von Stein?s work, /Geschichte der sozialen Bewegung in
Frankreich von /1789 /bis auf unsere Tage /(1850) made this attempt. He
conceived the social antagonisms in terms of the dialectic - the class
struggle was the negative principle by which society proceeds from one
historical form to another. Von Stein considered himself an orthodox
Hegelian. Building on Hegel?s separation of state from society, he found
that the actual content of historic progress was made up of changes in
social structure and that the objective of the warring classes was to
possess state power. But he interpreted these tendencies as general
sociological laws, so that it was by virtue of some ?natural? mechanism
that the class conflicts were supposed to lead to social order and to
progress on ever higher levels. The force of the dialectic was thus
neutralised and made part of a sociological system in which social
antagonisms were just means for establishing social harmony. In the end,
von Stein?s doctrine is not so far removed from the social theory of
positive philosophy.

We shall begin our discussion of the development of post-Hegelian social
thought with a brief sketch of the main trends in Saint-Simon?s work and
in the critical social theory that developed in France. We shall then
turn to an analysis of the two most influential writings of the
positivist social school: Comte?s Sociology and Stahl?s /Philosophy of
Right, /ending with von Stein?s study, which reconciles Hegel?s
dialectical conceptions with the system of positive philosophy.


        2. Saint-Simon

Saint-Simon <../../../../../glossary/people/s/a.htm#st-simon>, like
Hegel, begins with the assertion that the social order engendered by the
French Revolution proved that mankind had reached the adult stage.? In
contrast to Hegel, however, he described this stage primarily in terms
of its economy; the industrial process was the sole integrating factor
in the new social order. Like Hegel, again, Saint-Simon was convinced
that this new order contains the reconciliation of the idea and reality.
Human potentialities are no longer the concern of theory apart from
practice; the content of theory has been transferred to a plane of
rational activity carried on by individuals in direct association with
one another. ?Politics, morals, and philosophy, instead of terminating
in leisurely contemplation detached from practice, have eventually
arrived at their veritable occupation, namely, to create social
happiness. In a word, they are ready to realise that liberty is no
longer an abstraction, nor society a fiction.? The process of realising
this is an economic one. The new era is that of industrialism, which
brings with it a guarantee that it can fulfil all human potentialities.
?Society as a whole is based on industry. Industry is the only guarantor
of its existence, and the unique source of all wealth and prosperity.
The state of affairs which is most favourable to industry is, therefore,
most favourable to society. This is the starting point as well as the
goal of all our efforts.? a The progress of economic conditions
necessitates that philosophy pass into social theory; and the social
theory is none other than political economy or ?the science of production.?

At first Saint-Simon contented himself with proclaiming the principles
of radical liberalism. Individuals had been set free in order that they
might work, while society was the natural integer that served their
independent efforts into a harmonious whole. Government was an evil
necessary to cope with the danger of anarchy and revolution that lurk
behind the mechanisms of industrial capitalism. Saint-Simon began with a
predominantly optimistic view of industrial society-the rapid progress
of all productive forces, he thought, would soon blot out the growing
antagonisms and the revolutionary upheavals within this social system.
The new industrial order was above all a positive one, representing the
affirmation and fruition of all human endeavour for a happy and abundant
life. It was not necessary to go beyond the given; philosophy and social
theory needed but to understand and organise the facts. Truth was to be
derived from the facts and from them alone. Saint-Simon thus became the
founder of modern positivism.?

Social theory, Saint-Simon held, would use ?the same method that is
employed in the other sciences of observation. In other words, reasoning
must be based upon the facts observed and discussed, instead of
following the method adopted by the speculative sciences, which refer
all facts to reasoning.? Astronomy, physics, and chemistry had already
been established on this ?positive basis?; the time had now come for
philosophy to join these special sciences and make itself entirely positive.

Saint-Simon promulgated this positivism as the ultimate principle of his
philosophy: ?In all portions of my work, I shall be occupied with
establishing series of facts, for I am convinced that this is the only
solid part of our knowledge.? Theology and metaphysics, and, moreover,
all transcendental concepts and values were to be tested by the
positivistic method of exact science. ?Once all our knowledge is
uniformly founded on observations, the direction of our spiritual
affairs must be entrusted to the power of positive science.?

The ?science of man,? another name for social theory, thus was launched
on the pattern of a natural science; it had to be impressed with a
positive ?character, by founding it on observation and by treating it
with the method ?employed by the other branches [!] of physics.?,
Society was to be treated like nature. This attitude involved the
sharpest deviation from and opposition to Hegel?s philosophic theory.
The interest of freedom was removed from the sphere of the individual?s
rational will and set in the objective laws of the social and economic
process. Marx considered society to be irrational and hence evil, so
long as it continued to be governed by inexorable objective laws.
Progress to him was equivalent to upsetting these laws, an act that was
to be consummated by man in his free development. The positivist theory
of society followed the opposite tendency: the laws of society
increasingly received the form of natural objective laws. ?Men are mere
instruments? before the omnipotent law of progress, incapable of
changing or charting its course. The deification of progress into an
independent natural law was completed in Comte?s positive philosophy.

Saint-Simon?s own work did contain elements that ran counter to the
tendencies of industrial capitalism. According to him, the progress of
the industrial system presupposed that the struggle between classes was
first transformed and diverted into a struggle against nature, in which
all the social classes joined. The form of government he envisaged was
not one in which rulers command their subjects, but one in which the
government exercises a technical administration over the work to be
done. We might say that Saint-Simon?s philosophy developed in just the
reverse way to Hegel?s. It began with the reconciliation of idea and
reality and ended by viewing them as irreconcilable.

Economic crises and class struggles intensified in France as the
revolution of 1830 approached. By 1826 it was evident that the nation
and the monarchy were moving in opposite directions; the monarch was
preparing to establish a despotism while the nation was drifting toward
revolution. The lectures that Saint-Simon?s pupil, Bazard, gave in these
years on his master?s doctrine turned it into a radical critique of the
existing social order.

Bazard?s presentation holds to the basic assumption that philosophy must
be made identical with social theory, that society is conditioned by the
structure of its economic process, and that rational social practice
alone will eventually produce a genuine social form oriented to human
needs. The given form of society is no longer adequate to progress and
harmony as far as Bazard is concerned. He stigmatises the industrial
system as one of exploitation, as the last but by far not the least
example of the exploitation of man by man,? which has run the gamut of
civilisation?s history. In all its relations, the industrial system is
moulded by the inevitable struggle between the proletariat on the one
hand and the owners of the instruments and machinery of production on
the other.

The whole mass of workers is today exploited by those whose property it
utilises ... The entire weight of this exploitation falls upon the
working class, that is, upon the immense majority who are workers. Under
such conditions, the worker has become the direct descendant of the
slave and the serf. He is, as a person, free, and no longer attached to
the soil, but this is all the freedom he has got. He can exist in ibis
state of legal freedom only under the conditions imposed upon him by
that small class which a legislation born of the right to conquest has
invested with the monopoly of wealth, with the power to command the
instruments of labor at will and at leisure. [/Doctrine
Saint-Simonienne/, 1854]

Saint-Simon?s positivism was thus turned into its opposite. Its original
conclusions had glorified liberalism, but it now knew that the system
underlying this liberalism holds within it the seed of its own
destruction. Bazard showed, as Sismondi had before him, that the
accumulation of wealth and the spread of poverty, with their attendant
crises and growing exploitations, follow from the economic organisation
in which ?the capitalists and proprietors? are the ores to arrange the
social distribution of labor. ?Every individual is left to his own
devices? in the process of production, and no common interest or
collective effort exists to combine and administer the multitude of
works. When ?the instruments of labor are utilised by isolated
individuals? subject to the rule of chance and the fact of power,
industrial crises are made inevitable. The social order, then, Bazard
said, has become general disorder ?as a result of the principle of
unlimited competition.? Progressive ideas like the ones with which
capitalist society justified its social scheme at the beginning, ideas
of general freedom and of the pursuit of happiness within a rational
scheme of life, can reach fruition only with a new revolution ?that will
finally do away with the exploitation of man by man in all its insidious
forms. That revolution is inevitable, and until it is consummated all
the glowing phrases so oft repeated about the light of civilisation and
the glory of the century will remain mere language for the convenience
of privileged egoists.? The institution of private property will have to
come to an end, for if exploitation is to disappear tire scheme Of
Property by which exploitation is perpetuated must also disappear.

The /Doctrine Saint-Simonienne/ reflects the social upheavals caused by
the progress of industrialism under the Restoration. During this period,
machines were introduced on an ever larger scale (especially in the
textile mills), and industry began to concentrate.-However, France
experienced not only the industrial and commercial growth which
Saint-Simon?s early writings extol, but the reverse of this as well.
Costly crises shook the entire system in 1816-17 and in 1825-7. Workers
banded together to destroy the machines that caused them so much misery
and unemployment. ...

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Sismondi repudiated the philosophy of progress together with the entire
panoply of optimistic glorification. He called upon the state to exert
its protective authority in the interest of the oppressed mass. ?The
fundamental dogma of free and general competition has made great strides
in all civilised societies. It has resulted in a prodigious development
of industrial power, but it has also brought terrifying distress for
most classes of the population. Experience has taught us the need for
the protective authority [ of government], needed lest men be sacrificed
for the advancement of a wealth from which they will derive no benefit.?

Only a short decade after the publication of Sismondi?s work, social
philosophy fell back upon the dogma of progress, and, characteristically
enough, relinquished political economy as foundational for social
theory. Comte?s positive philosophy ushered in this regress. We shall
deal with it now.


        3. The Positive Philosophy of Society: Auguste Comte

Comte <../../../../../glossary/people/c/o.htm#comte-auguste> severed
social theory from its connection with the negative philosophy and
placed it in the orbit of positivism. At the same time he abandoned
political economy as the root of social theory and made society the
object of an independent science of /sociology. /Both-steps are
interconnected: sociology became a science by renouncing the
transcendent point of view of the philosophical critique. Society now
was taken as a more or less definite complex of facts governed by more
or less general laws-a sphere to be treated like any other field of
scientific investigation. The concepts that explain this realm were to
be derived from the facts that constitute it, while the farther-reaching
implications of philosophical concepts were to be excluded. The term
?positive? was a polemical term that denoted this transformation from a
philosophic theory to a scientific one. To be sure, Comte wished to
elaborate an all-embracing /philosophy, /as the title of his principal
work indicates, but it is readily visible that, in the context of
positivism, philosophy means something quite different from what it
meant previously, so much so that it repudiates the true content of
philosophy. ?Philosophie positive? is, in the last analysis, a
contradiction /in adjecto. /It refers to the synthesis of all empirical
knowledge ordered into a system of harmonious progress following an
inexorable course. All opposition to social realities is obliterated
from philosophic discussion.

Comte summarises the contrast between the positivist and the philosophic
theory as follows: positive sociology is to concern itself with the
investigation of facts instead of with transcendental illusions, with
useful knowledge instead of leisured contemplation, certainty instead of
doubt and indecision, organisation instead of negation and destruction.,
In all these cases, the new sociology is to tie itself to the facts of
the existing social order and, though it will not reject the need for
correction and improvement, it will exclude any move to overthrow or
negate that order. As a result, the conceptual interest of the positive
sociology is to be apologetic and justificatory.

This has not been true of all positivist movements. At the beginning of
modern philosophy, and again in the eighteenth century, positivism was
militant and revolutionary. Its appeal to the facts then amounted to a
direct attack on the religious and metaphysical conceptions that were
the ideological support of the /ancien /régime. The positivist approach
to history was developed then as proof positive that the right of man to
alter the social and political forms of life accorded with the nature
and progress of reason. ...



Further reading:

Philosophy of Right <../../../hegel/works/pr/prconten.htm>, Hegel, 1821
Historical Fate of Hegel?s Doctrine <../../../hegel/help/eh.htm>, Andy
Blunden
Political community and individual freedom in Hegel?s philosophy of
state <../../../../subject/philosophy/works/ot/pelczyns.htm>,
Pelczynski, 1984
Hegel & Modern Society
<../../../../subject/philosophy/works/ot/avineri7.htm>, Avineri

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Herbert Marcuse Internet Archive <../../index.htm>