extent individual consciousness and will find expression in the mass and in the course of evolution, but this is not to admit that the individual is "beggarly" and of no account. There are differences between individuals; historiographers speak of great men, and associate historical happenings with the personalities of these; to what extent they are right in doing so is a question to be decided on its merits in each case, but anyhow the so-called great men are themselves individuals. Bernstein does no more than give expression to an admitted truth when he desires to establish socialism subjectively not objectively, ethically not historically. Socialism is an ethical problem.
Are we then to return to Kant? That is a different question. It is true that Engels discovered his philosophical mentors in Kant and Fichte as well as in Hegel, and reasons can be adduced for a synthesis of Marxism with Kantianism. Vorländer and others made such an attempt; Tugan-Baranovskii and men of similar views have written on the other side. The cry, Return to Kant, may signify that the Marxists wish to devote themselves to epistemological criticism, and to this extent there is good reason for the adoption of such a watchword. But Kant's philosophy is essentially ethical, and we are compelled to ask how the amoralist and positivist historism of Marx and Engels can be practically united (I mean of course organically united) with the teaching of Kant.
The orthodox Marxists, as contrasted with the younger socialists and the revisionists, raise the cry, Return to Marx. In many cases, especially in the field of political economy, there may be good reason for the demand. As a philosopher, Marx has been superseded, and revisionism has made no new contribution in this domain.
The Marxists, the orthodox Marxists that is to say, are accustomed to conduct their apologetics in a purely scholastic manner. Scholasticism arises everywhere and always when reputedly absolute concepts and absolute truths have to be maintained and restated in opposition to the progress of thought. For the orthodox Marxists, however, it remains a scandal that the so-called unorthodox revisionism should continue, to find a place within the party, should be tolerated there, and should be enabled to maintain its place with the assistance of scholastic and ambiguous resolutions passed at party congresses.[1]
- ↑ The exclusion of the author Hildebrand for his colonial policy, decreed
