#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) Italy, FDCA: Il Cantiere anno 2022 n. 8 - HISTORICAL MATERIALISM - January 30, 1953 (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Extract from the Minute of the letter by P.C. Masini in S. Angelini, Cerbaia Val

di Pesa, January 19, 1953, in the Franco Serantini Library Archive. Now in
"Proletarian Action Anarchist Groups - The Ideas. The Militants, The Organization
"Volune first pag. 767. BFS Edioni Pantarei. ---- P.C. Masini ---- You therefore
first write: ---- "Are anarchists in agreement with the materialistic conception
of history Historischer Materialismus? If not, how can it be fought? I
instinctively are against it (I don't know much, I only know that they say that
everything has an economic ursache * motive) because I think that also factors
such as the sense of "power" (Macht, Power) have had an influence on history,
made by men and not by ideas. Men made history, often in the name of ideals,
etc., but they did it, indeed, more exactly, there were few men who decided the
fate of entire peoples. " The question can be divided as follows:
1) What is historical materialism? And subordinately: a) does historical
materialism explain all of history with economic reasons? b) Does it not consider
other factors, such as, for example, the sense of "power"? c) is the human
element of the will, according to historical materialism, extraneous to the
determination of the historical process?
Do anarchists accept or reject the materialistic conception of history? I
postponed the question that you raised first, because logically it cannot be
answered unless the questions I posed in n. 1.
1) Historical materialism is a doctrine, a theory, a principle, but above all a
"vision of the things of the world", a conception of life, a Weltanschauung. In
this sense it is a philosophy, even if in fact it marks the death of the
traditional, abstract philosophy of all the philosophies that preceded it. The
historical origin of historical materialism is linked to the fruitful meeting of
two currents of thought: historicism and materialsmo. This meeting took place in
European culture, in the revolutionary field of European culture, in the most
efficient brains that represented it at the time, in the first half of the
nineteenth century. The historicism heralded in Italy by G.B. Vico (1668-1774),
elaborated and formulated by Hegel (1770-1831), constituted a reaction to the
abstract rationalism of the eighteenth century which proclaimed some "truths" and
made them the yardstick to measure all of history, to finally reject all history
that had brought about the intellectual discovery of these "truths". Historicism,
on the other hand, discovered rationality in the very development of historical
facts, in their objective being carried out, it identified rationality with
reality itself. Materialism was the other current of thought which, after passing
through its "infancy" during which it had ended up placing matter as a
metaphysical entity, learned the dialectic from historicism, and almost in
return, freed historicism from any envelope idealist. (This summary exposition is
insufficient to understand the content of the two currents of thought, but it
serves to frame the genesis of historical materialism, which is indeed
historicism but not idealist historicism, which is materialism, but dialectical
materialism. Read some chapters of the "Antiduhring" by F. Engels to master the
subject and some modern manuals of contemporary philosophy). Historical
materialism is to be understood as: a) a method of historical interpretation that
links historical development to the succession of modes of production and
therefore to the movement of classes that base their existence on these modes of
production, base their relationships, derevive their own contradictions. Hence
the Weltanschauung of historical materialism. b) revolutionary theory of a class,
the working class, which while discovering reality, also beats at the level of
the cultural and political struggle the philosophies which are the product of the
enemy class, which are the justification for the hegemony of the enemy class in
the various phases of its development, its weapon of defense and
political-cultural offense. On the first point I notice your dissent: which is
the dissent of those who do not know or know by hearsay the principles of
historical materialism. According to what you affirm, it would seem that
historical materialism simply asserted that historical development has only one
immediate, automatic, evident reason: economic development, the economy. This is
what critics of Marxism such as Consiglio and Damiani say. They who also write
the name of Federico Engels with a capital H (Hengel) (once Voltaire received
from the marshal of Luxembourg a long letter of criticism of the tragedy Oreste
that he had written and had represented; he replied with five words: "Oreste si
writes without H ")
proof of their immeasurable vanity is a certain voluptuousness in setting
themselves up as critics, easy critics of Marx. They raise objections to
historical materialism so easy that the powerful brains of Marx and Engels
certainly did not fail to propose themselves, in order to give Damiani and
Consiglio the possibility of upsetting their whole system with four lines. It is
that not only Damiani and Consiglio today, but far more gifted men for almost a
century, have advanced reservations about the validity of historical materialism,
such as

explanation of the historical process on the basis of the succession and the
clash of modes of production. I will not be here to tell you the history of
Marxist revisionism. He will only say that revisionists and critics have too
recklessly simplified and schematized Marx's ideas (and many followers have lent
material to this distortion) in order to then be able to bury them easily under
the observations of common sense and under a mass of clichés.
At this point I must use some quotations to show that the materialistic
conception of history is economist, but not narrowly and narrowly economistic, as
our critics would like. I will use two texts, whose authors were elaborators and
popularizers
of historical materialism: Antonio Labriola (1843-1904) The materialistic
conception of history (last edition edited by the author, Rome 1902); Gior-
gio Plechanov (1856-1918), The fundamental questions of Marxism (1908). These two
authors were, to their discredit, detractors of anarchism, but it is enough to
read their writings on the subject to understand how these are polemical pretexts
that do not connect with the backbone of their work and that are distinguished by
their low level scientific, compared to their overall work. This does not detract
from the fact that these two writers were the most qualified to summarize and
expose the thought of Marx and Engels, even if at the time of the publication of
their essays, cited above, not all the writings of Marx and Engels were known.
(among these I recall the German Ideology discovered in 1920 by Riazanov; a work
which nevertheless confirms our interpretation of Marxism).
I start from an observation by Labriola (op. Cit. III): "... In our doctrine it
is no longer a question of re-translating all the complicated manifestations of
history into economic categories, but it is a question of explaining in the last
resort (Engels) every fact historical because of the underlying economic
structure (Marx): which implies analysis and reduction, and then mediation and
composition ".
Around this observation Labriola conducts many others which I summarize here:
1) The relationship between a manifestation of history (a fact, an idea, a
phenomenon) is not always evident; it must be sought, ascertained (and sometimes
it is not even physically possible to ascertain it).
2)
This same relationship is not immediate: that is, the manifestation is not
determined ipso-facto, mechanically, by an economic condition. There is a
mediation of political and ideological and psychological factors. The
relationship is indeed mediated. 3) There is not necessarily a conscience, an
awareness of this relationship in those who are its actors (for example, the
Reformation had at its basis economic determinants that were not acquired by its
protagonists, taken individually).
4) The element "will" as a historical factor is not banished from the
materialistic conception of history, but is included in history itself.
Labriola adds: "For us, that is, the undisputed principle is that it is not the
forms of consciousness that determine the being of man, but the way of being
precisely determines consciousness (Marx). But these forms of consciousness, as
they are determined by the conditions of life, they too are history ".
But we will return to this topic. Let's move on to Plechanov.
In his essays he responds to those who accused the materialistic conception of
history of "one-sidedness" and "automatism".
"Everything that has been said so far, come on
Marx's `` critics' 'of the alleged unilateral character of Marxism and its
self-styled contempt for all the `factors' of social evolution other than the
economic factor, derives simply from the misunderstanding of the task that Marx
and Engels reserve for action and reciprocal reactions between the `base 'and
the` superstructure. "Plechanov thus illustrates the importance given by Marx to
political and ideological factors. And speaking of the alleged" one-sidedness ",
P.[Plechanov]quotes a passage from a from Engels to Bernstein:
"Economic, juridical, philosophical, literary, artistic, etc. development rests
on economic development. But they all react together and separately on each other
and on the economic basis."
Regarding the alleged "automatism", here is another passage from a letter from
Engels:

"There is therefore no automatic effect of the economic situation, as some like
to portray for convenience. It is men who make their story, but in a given
environment that conditions them (in einem gegebenen, sie bedingenden Milieu).
economic relations, however powerful the influence exerted on them by other
relations of a political and ideological order, are nevertheless those whose
action is ultimately decisive and which constitute the common thread that allows
us to understand the whole system ".
And now enough with the quotes. If you want, read the two works cited. To reach
your next question
from, I want to do now. an observation: that history is a fabric of collective
phenomena. Even when there are individual manifestations (take tyranny and
tyrannicide, for example), individuals registered
strange, they express, they express forces of a collective nature. Individual
manifestations are also "referees" and are pulverized since their birth and
excluded from the general historical process as pathological and cerebral
manifestations (we will see later).
Here is precisely the "will to power" and the "lust for power" and the "spirit of
usurpation", as you want to call these tendencies. They are psychological data,
not congenital for charity even if hereditary (if they were congenital one would
have to believe in original sin!), They are psychological data formed in a jungle
society which is society divided into classes.
However, these tendencies are implemented, they take on consistency and
historical importance to the extent that they cease to be individual drives, they
interpret a collective tendency such as the tendency of a class to conquer
hegemony in society or the tendency of a group to conquer hegemony within the
same class. Without this interpenetration with a collective fact, without this
insertion into the historical process, they remain pure ravings of defeated
supermen (Hitler and Mussolini will be able to satisfy their bestial instinct for
power only by putting themselves at the service of a reactionary movement of the
bourgeoisie, putting themselves at the head of this a historically unavoidable
movement even without Hitler and Mussolini, and taking advantage of his thrust).
But apart from the "will to power" which is the will placed at the antisocial
service of the domination of one class over another class, the will exists in
itself, without specification. Is the will now banished from the historical
process according to the materialistic conception of history? Absolutely no.
I quote Labriola (op. Cit. V). "... On the other hand, that opinion is devoid of
any foundation, which aims at the denial of any will, by way of a theoretical
view, which would replace voluntarism with automatism: indeed this is a simple
and straightforward postulate fatuity ... "

As you can see, the accusation of "fatalism" to the materialistic conception of
history is without foundation, it is a polemical iniquity. In 1845 Marx, in his
third thesis on Feuerbach, wrote:
"... if, on the one hand, men are the product of the environment, this, on the
other hand, is modified precisely by men". In short, structure (actual
conditions) and superstructure (will) compose and develop the historical process
only by reacting on each other. And the historical process proceeds through the
contribution and intervention of the will in it, of that specified will (not of
the abstract will) which, on the other hand, cannot but intervene, since it is
formed for this purpose.
This is the essential core of the concept of praxis to which the theorists of
historical materialism so often return. And I too, modestly, should hold back a
long time to illustrate it, but I prefer to refer you as an introduction to this
study to the booklet published by GAAP "Lettura di Gramsci". In fact, Gramsci
gives the most consequent interpretation of historical materialism and develops a
vigorous criticism against its mechanistic and fatalistic deformations, without
however slipping on the level of the more banal humanistic revisionism.
To conclude, we are neither voluntarists nor fatalists: we are materialists.
And the materialists value the will, as an inevitable and necessary coefficient
of historical becoming, while they devalue the will which is the antihistory itself.
For example, whoever defends today the principle of the sovereign nation-state,
overtaken by the very historical development of capitalism in the imperialist
phase, makes an "arbitrary act", is nostalgic, is out of history; who still in
the current society divided into classes, instead of placing the movement of
social liberation on the emancipatory struggle of the proletariat against the
bourgeoisie, announces an agnostic humanism in the face of the class struggle,
denying the very existence of classes, agitates a motive out of date, which due
to its inactivity and abstractness results in a brake on the actually and
concretely "humanistic" movement of the proletariat, of the proletarian
revolution in progress. In both these cases, therefore, it is not a question of
"will"; it is a question of "arbitrariness" and it is right that these
arbitrators go to collide and crash on the rocks of objective conditions, it is
right that history does justice to these abstractions, liquidating them and
reducing them to marginal anomalies.
You will tell me now whether by this we justify everything that historically
"happens" and if by this we deny our own revolutionary commitment, intended to
overturn what is, to deny all the accidents of the present society. If we came to
such reactionary conclusions we would not have understood anything of the
materialistic conception of history and on the other hand we could not explain
how this conception has been the engine of so many human progress for a century.
We would fall into a misunderstanding of historicism, which often favors
dangerous retrospective involution in those who are victims of it. Certain bad
students of the historicist school in fact forget that society and with it
history has development trends and whoever wants to progress with history itself,
must put himself, let's say, on the wave of this development trend. For us, for
example, anarchism interprets a development trend of society which denies
capitalism, which denies and tends to overcome the capitalist state: phenomena
that also have had and still have their own development trend which, however, we,
at the moment where we historically justify its presence and by virtue of this
justification, we must fight and oppose. Because only to the extent that we
oppose, that is, we solicit this development with our offensive action, does it
take place insofar as it is part of a process, which proceeds only with the
concurrence of all its elements. It is not a question, mind you, of directly
favoring the course of a phenomenon, facilitating and routing it (as if for
example the proletariat of the metropolitan countries favored the inevitable
capitalist expansion in the colonies) but of contributing to the maturation and
therefore to the death of that phenomenon. , through our own resistance, through
our reaction to the phenomenon itself, since this resistance and this reaction
are not produced by an external act of the pure will but generated by the same
historical process so that they fulfill their contradictory role. I believe I
have explained my thinking and satisfied your question. You will be able to
complete the answer with the indicated readings.
I turn to the second question: Do anarchists reject or accept the materialistic
conception of history?
I answer: if the anarchist movement is as it is a revolutionary movement of the
working class, it cannot but accept the materialistic conception of history.
The demonstration can be given in theory and in history.
In historical context we can mention:

1) Bakunin's thought. Bakunin was not a pure theorist but if we were to place his
thought in a current of the last century, we could only place him in the current
of historical materialism. For his polemic against the idealism of Mazzini and
also of Proudhon, for his acknowledgments of the teaching of Marx from which on
the ground of historical materialism he repeatedly declared his consent, with the
same frankness with which he declared his profound dissent on the problem of
organization, on the problem of the state, on the problem of revolutionary
tactics. I could cite at least a dozen documents in this regard, enough to
confuse for example the editors of the magazine "Will" which recently under the
title "Bakunin against Marx" (a title whose triviality equals that of the
Stalinists who recently published a pamphlet containing some Marx's writings
under the title "Against Anarchism", forgetting that those writings have
polemical value but have very little theoretical value and no critical value)
published without introduction, without notes, without bibliographical references
a series of Bakuninian fragments piled up in bulk, without no serious
documentation criteria. Mind you, with this we do not deny a word of Bakunin's
critique of Marxism, but we consider a certain intellectual honesty a duty in
examining the controversy between Marx and Bakunin.

2) The thought of Bakunin's disciples. I remember only two, Italians: Carlo
Cafiero and Emilio Covelli. No doubt they were two coherent materialists, who for
the time in which they lived absorbed the principles of a materialistic
conception of history quite well. I dispense with producing documents, as I would
go too long.
3) Malatesta's thought deserves a lengthy investigation into the various phases,
since this analysis would prove without a shadow of a doubt that at the bottom of
his thought there is a materialistic orientation. In the "Libertario" in
"Periodica" a note of mine appeared on the subject. He will write again on the
subject, and on the IMPULSE the proofs will appear on it (see the short passage
published in the last issue).
4) Some very bold statements of Fabbri ("It would be wrong to take Marxism as a
term of differentiation between anarchism and socialism. One could theoretically
be anarchist and Marxist... In fact, theoretically, there has not always been
absolute incompatibility. , in the ideas of various socialist and anarchist
writers, between anarchism and Marxism ". See" Dictatorship and revolution "pp.
162-3) and Berneri (" Historical materialism, the ideological system most
fruitful of truth ". on Carlyle, recently republished in "Will").
It can be argued that many anarchists are in fact from idealists. Apart from the
fact that this alleged idealism of anarchists is in most cases a sentimental
attitude that has nothing to do with theories, it has infected some sectors of
the Italian anarchist movement and reduced these same sectors to impotence, he
dismissed them as fractions of the revolutionary movement. There is no doubt for
us that those sectors of the Italian anarchist movement that have allowed
themselves to be polluted and every day allow themselves to be polluted more and
more by idealism, bourgeois philosophy (see episode of Zaccaria for the death of
Croce, the greatest exponent of idealism as a philosophy of the bourgeoisie ; see
the canonization of Croce himself in the columns of UN; see the whole controversy
against GAAP which is full of idealism) are passed off as the revolutionary cause
of the proletariat.
Go on.
To say that the materialistic conception of history is proper to anarchism as a
revolutionary movement of the working class does not mean that we accept Marxism
as a political theory. Indeed, precisely in the name of the materialist
conception of history, we reject certain principles of the Marxist doctrine. Here
we are in the theoretical demonstration not only of the reconciliation, but
rather of the consanguinity of the materialistic conception of history with the
principles that constitute anarchism, which justify its political autonomy from
Marxist movements. (And in fact, our differentiation from Marxism took place
precisely in a period, in which the anarchist militants were all and without
hesitation inspired by historical materialism).
Three seem to me to be the essential principles of anarchism:
1) The political organization (the anarchist movement) is not a prius but a
posterius in the face of the working class: it is not a before, it is an after.
On this level, the anarchists value the class, its general interests, its
universal aspirations in the face of the "party" they have always argued with the
super-party, bureaucratic, centralizing tendencies in the workers' movement.
Precisely in the name of materialism they today criticize the idealization of the
"party" as an elected group of ideologues and enlightened politicians (Cf. the
"Theses on the relations between revolutionary organization and popular masses").
2) Anti-parliamentarism, anti-electoralism, anti-legalism. Anarchists always
maintained, in homage to the principles of historical materialism (see E.
Malatesta's pamphlet, "The labor movement and electoral tactics") that it is the
economic conditions that determine policies and not vice versa and that in
conditions and relationships economics, it is necessary to operate in a
revolutionary sense, and not to divert class action on the infertile level of the
old bourgeois politics.
3) Antistatism in relation to the problem of power. The anarchists arguing
against the metaphysics of power and arguing the need to conquer real power with
direct action (all power to popular mass organizations) opposed a healthy
materialistic conception to the idealism of the "workers' state" and to
"transitory power". Just Cafiero in his letter to Engels of June 1872, wrote: "We
all want to conquer, or rather, claim capital from the community, and for this
purpose two different ways are proposed.

Some advise a coup on the main fortress, the State, which fell into the power of
ours, the door to capital will be opened. to everyone; while the others warn us
to break down every obstacle all together, and to collectively take possession of
that capital, which we want to ensure forever collective ownership.
I am aligned with the seconds, my dear. . . And you, good materialist, how can
you be with the first? Doesn't the theory of determining circumstances, which you
know so well to develop on occasion, lead to doubt in your spirit about the
nature of the work that you would carry out once you were installed in the
established power? ".
Therefore, dear Angelini, the materialistic conception of history, also known as
the philosophy of praxis, is our "philosophy" (and what other, I ask you, could
we assume for ours?). After all, as you have seen, we have what it takes with the
past and the present. Even with the present, because this conception is a sure
guide not only in the struggles against class enemies, not only in our critique
of today's official Marxists, but also in answering so many questions that
reality poses to us.
One on behalf of reality, you ask yourself: "I am in controversy with the
Trotschists, and if I win, the
their youth passes ladies.
They are already discontented, and ideologically ill prepared. However
I should be better prepared, especially in fighting Trotskyism. Can you advise me? ".
I think it is perfectly useless to argue with the Trotskyists on the subject of
the materialistic conception of history, even if many of their errors derive from
this correct but badly applied conception. It is more appropriate to attack them
on the political ground. As you know they: a) do not consider the USSR a
capitalist and imperialist state, but a degenerate socialist state, in which a
bureaucratic caste has been raised on a socialist economic basis; b) they support
the need to defend the USSR, ie its alleged socialist structure, against the USA,
until the war.
It will not be difficult for you to beat them on this ground, to demonstrate that
the USSR is a capitalist and imperialist state, to argue that the position of the
world proletariat in the event of war is not that of intervening in favor of one
or the other belligerent, but that of international solidarity and revolutionary
defeatism on all fronts. (N.B. This criticism is fine if we are dealing with
orthodox Trotskyists, adhering to the IV International. If we are dealing with
dissident Trotskyists, there are some here and there then we need to know their
particular positions, in order to be able to subject them to criticism).
To explain the capitalism of the USSR (whose external characteristics are so
different from the traditional ones) I believe that the following thesis can be
ventured: This is a principle of dialectical materialism: every change in
quantity ends up causing a change in quality (cf. , Antiduhring). At the end of
the eighteenth century the invention of machines, the increase in production in
all fields, the formation of a larger market were quantitative changes that
resulted in a great qualitative leap: the birth of modern capitalism and the
definitive decline of feudal age, the formation of the working class, the class
struggle. It was a qualitative change in the modes of production following some
technical breakthroughs that brought about those great qualitative changes.
Today we are witnessing perhaps another turning point: the introduction of a
system of organizing production, exchange and consumption, the planned economy
(which is also a technical discovery) is a qualitative change in the modes of
production that is producing a corresponding qualitative leap: from the
traditional bourgeois state we are passing everywhere to the capitalist state of
a functional nature (cf. thesis on the liquidation of the state, difference
between the instrumental state and the functional state). This leap does not
attenuate but aggravates the class contradictions within modern society. The USSR
inserted as an integral part of the international society that is producing this
phenomenon, seems to me a moment, for example, of the phenomenon itself.

* reason cause (in German)
_________________________________________
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