The Arcades Project - Operi

should be adopted." J. Joubert, Oeuvres (Paris, 1883), vol. 2, p. 276 ("Du Style,"
=. In. 16
With regard to political economy, Marx characterizes as "its vulgar element"
above all "that elenlent in it which is mere reproduction-that is, representation
of appearance:' Cited in Korsch, Karl Marx , vol. 2, p. 22.51 Tills
vulgar element is to be denounced in other sciences as well. [N16,3]
Concept of nature in Marx: "If in Hegel ... physical nature likewise encroaches
on world history,' then Marx conceives nature from the beginning in social catego­
ries. Physical nature does not enter direclly into world history; rather, it enters
indirectly, as a process of material production that goes on, from the earliest
moment, not only between man and nature but also between man and man. Or, to
use language that will be clear to philosophers as well: in Marx '8 rigorously social
science, that pure nature presupposed by all human activity (the economic na,tura
naturans) is replaced everywhere by nature as material production (the economic
natura naturata)-that is, by a social matter mediated and transformed
through human social activity, and thus at the same time capable of further change
and modification in the present and the future.' Korsch, Karl Marx, vol. 3, p. 3.;;2
[N16,4]
Korsch provides the following reformulation of the Hegelian triad in Marxian
terms: The Hegelian contradiction' was replaced by the struggle of the social
classes; the dialectical 'negation,' by the proletariat; and the dialectical 'synthesis
' by the proletarian revolution." Korsch, Kar·l Marx, vol. 3, p. 45. :) [N16,5]
Restriction of the materialist conception of history in Korsch: As the material
mode of production changes, so does the system of mediations existing between the
material base and its political and juridical superstructure, with its corresponding
social forms of consciousness. Hence, the general propositions ofmatel'ialist social
theory concerning the relations between economy and politics or economy and
ideology, or concerning such general concepts as class and class su"uggle, " .. have
a different meaning for each specific epoch and, strictly speaking, are valid, in the
particular form Marx gave them within the present bourgeois society, only for this
society. " .. Only for contemporary bourgeois society, where the spheres of economy
and politics are formally and entirely separated from each other, and where
workers as citizens of the state are free and possessed of equal rights, does the
scientific demonstration of their actual ongoing lack of freedom in the economic
sphere have the character of a theoretical discovery." Korsch, vol. 3, pp. 21-22.
[N16a,1]
Korsch makes 'the seemingly paradoxical observation (which is nonetheless ...
suited to the final and most mature form of Marxian science) that in the materialist
social theory of Marx the ensemhle of sodal relations, which hourgeois sociologists
treat as an independent domain . .. , already is investigated aceording to its objec-