Korsch's Political Development

In: Telos, Band 27, S. 61-78

Abstract

In the mid-1930s, Korsch described himself as a Marxist, but critical & not dogmatic. The core of his political thought was the concept of autonomous proletarian actions, as opposed to the use of Marxism as an ideology. His rejection of theoretical Marxism derived from his rejection of the practice of Marxist movements. Korsch saw spontaneous proletarian action in 1918/19 as undermined by inability to organize, & was led by this view to Leninism; he attacked the social democrats as a branch of fascism, which he saw as the inevitable response to the defeat of the workers. Korsch advocated the natural necessity of the spontaneous rise of struggle from the economic situation; without such struggle, counterrevolution would result. Korsch's concept of freedom in this period was freedom to choose revolutionary radicalism. Ultimately, he was led to ultraleftism; yet he did not want to provide a vision of the transitional proletarian state different from that of Marx & Lenin, but only to warn about its nature. Korsch considered that Marx's politics were essentially bourgeois in character, amounting to advocacy of radical democracy not transformed as he had transformed bourgeois economics. For Korsch, the recreation of Marxism was a political problem; he saw Marx's economics as valid, but his political programs as unworkable. W. H. Stoddard