JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Politics305SEARCH FOR A METHODThe progressive–regressive methodI have said that we accept without reservation the thesis set forth by Engels in hisletter to Marx: “Men themselves make their history but in a given environment whichconditions them.” However, this text is not one of the clearest, and it remains open tonumerous interpretations. How are we to understand that man makes History if at thesame time it is History which makes him? Idealist Marxism seems to have chosen theeasiest interpretation: entirely determined by prior circumstances—that is, in the finalanalysis, by economic conditions—man is a passive product, a sum of conditionedreflexes. Being inserted in the social world amidst other equally conditioned inertias,this inert object, with the nature which it has received, contributes to precipitate or tocheck the “course of the world.” It changes society in the way that a bomb, withoutceasing to obey the principle of inertia, can destroy a building. In this case there wouldbe no difference between the human agent and the machine. Marx wrote, in fact: “Theinvention of a new military weapon, the firearm, of necessity modified the whole innerorganization of the army, the relationships inside the cadre on the basis of whichindividuals form an army and which make of the army an organized whole, and finally,the relations between different armies.” In short, the advantage, here seems to be onthe side of the weapon or the tool, their simple appearance overturns everything.This conception can be summed up by a statement which appeared in the Courriereuropéen (in Saint Petersburg): “Marx considers social evolution to be a naturalprocess governed by laws which do not depend upon the will, the consciousness, orthe intention of men, but which, on the contrary, determine them.” Marx quotes thispassage in the second preface to Capital. Does he really accept it as a fair appraisal ofhis position? It is difficult to say. He compliments the critic for having excellentlydescribed his method and points out to him that the real problem concerns the dialecticalmethod. But he does not comment on the article in detail, and he concludes by notingthat the practical bourgeois is very clearly conscious of the contradictions in capitalistsociety, a remark which seems to be the counterpart of his statement in 1860: “[Theworkers’ movement represents] the conscious participation in the historical processwhich is overturning society.” Now one will observe that the statements in the Courriereuropéen contradict not only the passage quoted earlier from Herr Vogt but also thefamous third thesis of Feuerbach. “The materialist doctrine according to which menare a product of circumstances and of education . . . does not take into account the factthat circumstances are modified precisely by men and that the educator must behimself educated.” Either this is a mere tautology, and we are simply to understand