(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #228 - Classics of subversion: Karl Korsch, "Marxism and Philosophy" (fr)

Karl Korsch is a Marxist intellectual particularly interesting to enrich libertarian 
thought. Close to council communism, he participated in the German revolutionary movement 
in 1919. He believes that social revolution can only come from the self-organization of 
the proletariat. Karl Korsch's Marxism offers a critical attack all ideologies, starting 
with the idealist Marxism. ---- In Marxism and philosophy , he shattered the chatter of 
the Leninist authoritarian Vulgate. Against mechanical Marxism attached to an avant-garde, 
Karl Korsch believes that revolutionary consciousness emerges directly in the struggles. 
He refuses the separation between theory and practice. The workers' councils and 
assemblies control must produce their own thinking to develop a revolutionary consciousness.

But unlike the anarchists and leftists, it is not only just a moral denunciation of 
authoritarian Marxism, which merely oppose an ideology to another. Instead, he applies the 
Marxist analysis and dialectical materialism of Marxism itself.

For him, the triumph of reformist and authoritarian ideologies seems to be related to a 
separation between theory and practice. During the history of the labor movement, the 
Marxist intellectuals always move further struggle and the proletariat. The different 
variants of Marxism, social democracy of Leninism, while refusing to challenge the state. 
Then, Marxism is no longer living Marx but includes a fragmentation of specialized 
disciplines (economics, philosophy, sociology).

Idealism then overrides the revolutionary practice, contrary to Marx's approach. In 
Russia, the central party and the Bolshevik ideology can then replace the soviets. 
Instead, the critical Marxism remains committed to human emancipation. " Socialism is in 
its destination and all the way a struggle for the realization of freedom , "said Karl 
Korsch nicely.

Marxism and philosophy can always denounce the ideological deceptions, as the masquerade 
of the Left Front. Above all, the approach of Karl Korsch opposes Marxist trendy 
intellectuals. Today, Badiou, Zizek and other Negri merely parading in philosophy 
seminars. They seem totally disconnected from any practical control. Thus, for these 
worldly radical emancipation can not come from the social struggles, but only theoretical 
rantings of some bourgeois intellectuals.

Sylvain (Montpellier)

? Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy , Allia, 2012, 144 pages, 9.20 euros.