Marx Et Les Leçons De L’histoire

Summary

The very idea of a lesson implies that of history, demands a consciousness or knowledge of the past. The consciousness or knowledge of the past necessarily intervenes in present action.

The motives for negating the existence of the lessons of history therefore derive from the following. (1) The artificial isolation of the political domain. (2) The illegitimate restriction to a certain type of lesson—to precepts for individual or occasional use. (3) Complex motives, ones different from those alleged. One sometimes challenges the lessons of history because one understands them only too plainly, and they are distasteful (bachelier). But such an attitude implies having recourse to the objectivity of history with a view to suggesting precisely its lack of objectivity. (4) One of the most customary arguments in favour of this negation takes into consideration the unique and irreversible character of historical development. It is again employing recourse to history against that history itself. One finds in Hegel this temptation to see in history a not very effective retrospective knowledge: “the bird of Minerva takes its flight at nightfall.”

In Marx this knowledge acquires a much more marked prospective and directing role. (I) Marx produces historical works with a practical intention, as an educator of the proletariat and organizer of its action. (2) He appeals constantly to historical examples in order to orient present steps. (3) He puts a philosophy of history—historical materialism—at the basis of all his theoretical conceptions. (4) He proposes a historical explanation of the genesis and development of this historical materialism itself. This attitude implies a reversal of common opinions on this subject and assumes a paradoxical aspect for many observers. In order to adopt it, one must in fact submit to several theoretical demands. (1) The dialectic of the subject and the object. (2) The indispensable role of consciousness in events: without consciousness, no “lesson” of history would be evidently conceivable. (3) Conscious activity produces partially unconscious effects. It becomes alienated in an objective reality which emancipates itself from its tutelage, becomes autonomous and follows its own laws. (4) Historical changes comprise moments of rupture and “qualitative bonds,” but ones integrated in a basic continuity.

History gives lessons only to the extent that it is capable of receiving lessons. Everything takes place as if the human past instructed and guided the present, as if from a global viewpoint, history were its own pupil.