On the Contradictions of Marxism
Wolfgang Fritz Haug (Freie Universität Berlin)
Contradictions: A Journal for Critical Thought I, no. 2 (2017): 13–22
download (pdf)
Keywords: Marxism, left history, contradiction, Marxism, left history, contradiction, practical dialectics
Since the beginnings of Marxism there has been a persistent demand to understand this theory, as well its practical and organizational development, according to the principles of Marxism itself. By “Marxism” I mean here historical materialism: not mechanical determinism but the interaction of transformational praxis with continually changing reality. This interaction may be confrontational and, as the poet-philosopher Bertolt Brecht said, “like everything that pertains to confl ict, collision, and struggle, it cannot be treated without the materialist dialectic.” (Gesamtausgabe, vol. 23 [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1993], p. 376.) In the following article I want to show that Brecht’s thesis is also valid for
the history of Marxism and its forms of motion.
Erratum: On pp. 15–16, the text incorrectly reads "At her trial, Rosa Luxemburg stated that an individual counts as being convicted when he gets trapped in contradictions." It should read: "In a trial, says Rosa luxemburg, an individual counts as being convicted whe he gets trapped in contradictions."
doi: 10.46957/con.2017.2.2
← back to archive
