“Je ne suis pas marxiste”?
Or, Marx quoted out of context
di Roberto Fineschi
The above-quoted statement by Marx referred to Lafargue and the ‘collectivists’, who at that time were branded with the derogatory term ‘Marxists’, and certainly not to the theoretical system to which Marx, together with Engels, made the greatest contribution.
Time and again, we hear the famous statement attributed to Marx: ‘I am not a Marxist’. The intention is to draw a line between the old Moro and the political movements that claim to follow in his footsteps, today as in the past. However, this is a misleading and out-of-context use of the phrase and is therefore, in essence, incorrect; I shall try to explain why, starting with the facts.
1) We know of this phrase thanks to… Engels – yes, the very man whom some even claim to be the inventor of Marxism. He quotes it in a letter to Bernstein, stating that Marx had used it in a conversation with Lafargue to distance himself from the French group of ‘collectivists’ led by Lafargue and Guesde [1].
So the source is Engels, and the context is that of the French debate in the early 1880s.
2) It must be made very clear that at that time the modern-day meaning of the word ‘Marxism’ did not exist. What did it mean then? Something very specific and, essentially, derogatory. It seems that the expression suffered the same fate as other words that later became ‘normal’, such as ‘Gothic’ and ‘Baroque’ – that is, terms that originally had a negative connotation. Bakunin had already introduced the use of ‘Marxian’ and ‘Marxist’ in this sense during the controversies that erupted within the First International. Similarly, within the French debate in the early 1880s, the group ‘close’ to Marx’s positions, active around the newspaper *L’égalité*, was labelled by its opponents as ‘Marxist’: ‘Marx’s clique’, so to speak. Marx himself refers to this discussion as a debate between ‘Marxists’ and ‘anti-Marxists’ [2].
Thus, at that time, ‘Marxism’ was a derogatory term with which the opponents of the collectivists denounced their enemies, regarding them as close to Marx’s positions.
Why was the group ‘labelled’ in this way? Quite simply, because Marx and Engels had in fact substantially contributed to the drafting of the political, economic and social programme put forward by that section of the party in its political activities. In short: it was true. Marx was a Marxist even in this narrow sense [3].
Why, then, did Engels and Marx distance themselves from the term? Whilst the French group was evidently close to Marx, it certainly did not represent his ideas and theory in a complete or adequate manner. In fact, at that time, the term did not refer to a comprehensive world view, but simply to an orientation and a source of inspiration with which Marx did not feel comfortable associating his own name, particularly because it had taken the form of a local internal conflict, of parochial squabbles, in which, moreover, the name had a derogatory connotation.
To conclude: assuming it was actually uttered, Marx’s remark simply means that, however close he actually was to them and however directly he had influenced their ideas and programmes, he did not want Guesde and Lagargue’s French group – which was becoming increasingly parochial – to be identified with a (derogatory) epithet inspired by his name. This, in short, is the meaning of the remark.
How did a "positive" meaning of the term emerge? It was only after Marx’s death that Engels, albeit with little conviction, came to accept the use of the term in a positive sense, endorsing the organisation of a ‘congress of Marxists’ at which he sought to bring together all those whom, amongst the various socialist and communist groups, he considered most faithful to Marx’s thought, precisely to counter those centrifugal and sectarian forces which he believed had emerged within the various factions in different countries. Here, the term takes on a decidedly different meaning, coming to denote a more general conception of the world based on ‘scientific socialism’, the construction of which Engels evidently aimed for consciously, as is indeed demonstrated by his tireless activity in the final years of his life. However, it was undoubtedly Kautsky who pushed most forcefully – breaking with Engels’s reservations – towards a positive use of the term as an identifying feature of a political faction. Beyond its contingent origins, it is therefore Kautsky, even more so than Engels, who encouraged the use of the category ‘Marxism’ in its commonly understood sense [4].
If, in extremely general terms, we call ‘Marxism’ a movement based on Marx’s theory that aims to build an international organisation of workers capable of transforming present-day society – and thereby enabling these workers to develop an awareness of their own historical role – then Marx was undoubtedly a Marxist. His entire life as a political activist demonstrates this beyond any shadow of a doubt. Whether one chooses to call this political practice ‘Marxism’ or by any other name does not alter its substance. Moreover, the attempt to realise this project had already been undertaken by Marx himself, together with Engels, during his lifetime. To suggest that Marx did not approve of *Anti-Dühring* (to which, incidentally, he contributed), or that he was unaware of or did not endorse Engels’s pamphlets on the transition of socialism from utopia to science, etc., seems, quite frankly, ahistorical.
Marx and Marxism – or rather, Marxisms – are not the same thing; this is almost self-evident. But it is not true that they are not interconnected; the real issue, in my view, is the reconstruction of developments, mediations, but also differences or contradictions between the spectrum of historical Marxisms and the old Moro’s theory of capital; certainly not imagining a Marx who was distant or even sarcastic towards the prospect of organised political action based on a system of ideas linked to his theory.
Notes:
[1] Engels’s letter to Bernstein of 2–3 November 1882: ‘Now, what in France goes by the name of ‘Marxism’ is in fact a very peculiar phenomenon, so much so that Marx once said to Laf[argue]: ‘ce qu’il a de certain c’est que moi, je ne suis pas marxiste’ [what is certain is that I am not a Marxist]” (K. Marx, F. Engels, Letters 1880–1883 (March), Milan, Edizioni Lotta Comunista, 2008, p.
279). Marx’s statement is quoted in French in the original.
[2] Letter from Marx to Engels dated 30 September 1882, in K. Marx, F. Engels, Letters, op. cit., p. 266.
[3] See note 43 in K. Marx, F. Engels, *Werke*, Vol. 35: *Briefe Januar 1881 – März 1883*, Berlin, Dietz, 1985, pp. 505 ff.
[4] For a comprehensive account, see the classic works by G. Haupt, ‘Marx and Marxism’, in *History of Marxism* (Einaudi), vol. 1: *Marxism in Marx’s Time*, Turin, Einaudi, 1978, pp. 292–314, and M. Manale in *Economie et société*, ‘On the Origins of the Concept of “Marxism”’, October 1974, pp. 1397–1430; ‘La constitution du “Marxisme”’, April–May 1976, pp. 813–839; ‘L’édification d’une doctrine marxiste’, January–February 1978, pp. 163–215.
