Materialist Pedagogy and the Enlightenment of Interest

Marx in any case did not use the notion of interest to denote a static characteristic of human beings and social classes. Indeed, the faculty of interest fulfilled a far from self-evident function even in the case of the proletariat. In Capital , Marx himself described "the intellectual desolation . . . artificially produced by converting immature human beings into mere machines for the fabrication of surplus-value."^[44] On the basis of similar observations, Adam Smith drew the conclusion that "though the interest of the labourer is strictly connected with that of society, he is incapable either of comprehending that interest, or of understanding its connexion with his own."^[45]

Yet for a variety of reasons, Marx maintained a far greater confidence than Smith in the ability of the worker to grasp his situation. One critical factor, certainly, was the inherent reasoning power he ascribed to the faculty of interest: for Marx, unlike Smith, assumed that interest provided a steadfast motive for accurately calculating advantages. (Smith, by contrast, tended to conflate interest with the passions, thus depriving the faculty of any intrinsic link with rationality.^[46] In addition, Marx assumed the importance of consciously cultivating an accurate understanding of social concerns. Although the faculty of interest inherently mediated between circumstances and consciousness, its power as an historical force derived from the ability of the interested individuals to perceive common concerns, to act together for mutual benefits, and to acquire an understanding of social relations lucid enough to make such action effective.^[47] While Marx believed such an understanding often spontaneously arose in response to circumstances, he also believed such native knowledge could be refined and elucidated through education: this would be the task of a materialist pedagogy aimed at the cultivation of interest.

In The Holy Family , Marx had quoted with evident approval several passages from Helvétius and Holbach, both of whom grasped the importance for social change of clearly comprehending one's material interest—unlike the left-Hegelians, who portrayed socialism as an ideal of pure reason independent of reality. "As, according, to Helvétius, it is education, by which he means . . . not only education in the ordinary sense but the totality of the individual's conditions of life, which forms man, if a reform is necessary to abolish the contradiction between particular interests and those of society, so, on the other hand, a transformation of consciousness is necessary to carry out such a reform."^[48] Hegel had similarly linked interest and education. In the Philosophy of Right , after remarking that the "end" of individuals in civil society is "their own interest," Hegel added that "Individuals can attain their ends only in so far as they themselves determine their knowing, willing and acting in a universal way and make themselves links in this chain of social connexions. In these circumstances, the interest of the Idea—an interest of which these members of civil society are as such unconscious—lies in the process whereby their singularity and their natural condition are raised, as a result of the necessities imposed by nature as well as by arbitrary [i.e., socially generated] needs, to formal freedom and formal universality of knowing and willing—the process whereby their particularity is educated up to subjectivity." For Hegel, "The final purpose of education . . . is liberation and the struggle for a higher liberation still. . . . In the individual subject, this liberation is the hard struggle . . . against the immediacy of desire, against the empty subjectivity of feeling and the caprice of inclination; but it is through this educational struggle that the subjective will itself attains objectivity within. . . . "^[49]

For Marx, as for Helvétius and Hegel, the formation process of subjectivity in society was prompted by the "natural" necessity of primary needs, the "arbitrary" necessity of socially acquired needs, and the individual's inherent interest in bettering his condition;^[50] moreover, for Marx as for Helvétius, education included "the totality of the individual's conditions of life." The specific shape taken by the educational process, however, depended on the individual's location within society, and the specific social connections he was drawn into and could draw upon.

The situation of the proletarian, for example, facilitated a rough

and ready understanding of contemporary social relations and their essentially inequitable nature. According to Engels in The Condition of the Working Class m England , an early work that much impressed Marx, "The English working man who can scarcely read and still less write nevertheless has a shrewd notion of where his own interest and that of his nation lies. He knows, too, what the selfish interest of the bourgeoisie is, and what he has to expect of that bourgeoisie." That Marx himself shared this high estimate of the proletariat and its native understanding is confirmed by an article he published in 1844, criticizing the Young Hegelian Arnold Ruge. In an earlier article, Ruge had described the Silesian weavers' revolt of 1844 as the futile gesture of ignorant and desperate men; he recommended that the Young Hegelians help point out the political principles at stake, and impress upon the king the need for reform. Marx, by contrast, praised the "theoretical and conscious character" of the uprising, citing as evidence the "song of the weavers," a popular anthem described by him as a "bold call to struggle" which clearly proclaimed "its opposition to the society of private property." In such mundane cultural artifacts—political almanacs and songbooks circulated widely during the popular uprisings of the early nineteenth century—Marx found the rudiments of a civic education. He also saw an eager audience: the German proletariat, argued Marx, had an "educational level or capacity for education" (Bildungsfähigkeit ) far surpassing that of the timid and narrow-minded German bourgeoisie. Nor did these workers require tutoring in political principles by Young Hegelians like Ruge; indeed, the weavers demonstrated a more realistic understanding of social forces than the latter, with his hopes for benevolent monarchial reform. In this situation, what was needed, according to Marx, was not a patronizing philosophical defense, but instead a clear and accurate description of the Silesian weavers' revolt itself, and an analysis of its context and consequences: "Confronted with the first outbreak of the Silesian workers' uprising, the sole task of one who thinks and loves the truth consisted not in playing the role of school-master in relation to this event, but instead of studying its specific character."^[51]

Marx, like Engels, thus assumed that the proletarians of nineteenth-century Europe were uniquely situated to acquire a dear and lucid understanding of modern social relations; indeed, their per-

sonal experience of poverty and exploitation made such an understanding all but imperative. In the words of The German Ideology , "The contradiction between the individuality of each separate proletarian and labor, the conditions of life forced upon him, becomes evident to him, for he is sacrified from youth onwards. . . . "^[52]

As The Communist Manifesto added, the interests of the proletariat were also shaped by the "elements of political and general education" (Bildungselemente ) bequeathed by the bourgeoisie to the proletariat to enlist its aid in the bourgeois revolutions; as sections of the ruling class subsequently came to defend the interests of the proletariat, they supplied it as well "with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress," and further helped cultivate its interests beyond "the immediacy of desire," to a level of shared insight into historical development and the objective possibilities for freedom it harbored. Thus, as Marx summarized the process in The Poverty of Philosophy , economic conditions in themselves helped transform "the mass of the people in the country into workers. The domination of capital had created for this mass a common situation, common interests," but the workers were not immediately aware, either that they shared common interests, or that these interests were implicated in a social system which dominated them all: "This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself." However, the native understanding of the worker and the crowded urban conditions of factory labor, coupled with the political education provided by the bourgeois revolutions, gradually brought the workers to the point where they could collectively protest the social conditions of an existence they perceived as unjust. The political struggle which followed forced each party to clarify publicly its aims and principles: and it was only in and through this increasingly conscious struggle that the proletariat finally became "united and constitutes itself as a class for itself."^[53]

The proletariat's political organization had a critical role to play in this pedagogical process: for if the objective "identity of interests" within a social group generated "no community, no national bond, and no political organization," then this group could prove "incapable of enforcing their class interests in their own name."^[54] A political party represented a forum where workers could become aware of common concerns, while party leaders could help transform "the aims of the individual into universal aims."^[55] To this end, the new

science of society needed to be conveyed to the workers. On the one hand, science, by associating itself with the proletariat, "ceased to be doctrinaire," and became revolutionary; on the other, the proletariat, by equipping itself with a scientific understanding of the laws governing society, ceased to be the passive product of circumstances, and instead became their effective master. It was thus one of Marx's constant concerns to present his scientific findings in a popular form, through speeches and pamphlets like "Wage Labor and Capital." By demonstrating the systemic exploitation of labor under capitalism, he hoped to make clear the reasons why a revolutionary transformation was necessary, as well as why such a revolution was in the interest of the workers. However, the ultimate success of this pedagogical task depended on the willingness of workers to educate themselves: "They themselves," declared Marx and Engels in 1850, "must do the utmost for their final victory by clarifying their minds as to what their class interests are," a clarification facilitated "by taking up their position as an independent party as soon as possible."^[56]

In the course of the class struggle thus consciously articulated, the proletarians came to understand the discrepancy between reality and the ideals inculcated during the bourgeois revolutions. Moreover, they came to understand this discrepancy as unnecessary and irrational: the technical and economic means for the emancipation of labor and the realization of true liberty and equality existed, as did the cooperative power of the working class necessary to effect such a transformation in their mutual interest. While rooted in the individual and his needs, enlightened interest thus provided a real motive for actualizing such norms as freedom and justice—norms in no way reducible either to the economic demands of trade unionists or to the categorical imperative of the philosphers.^[57] Dedicated to making the possibility of communism manifest in just such discrepancies between professed norms and a contradictory reality, the party leaders wanted "the workers to leave the old society alone, the better to be able to enter the new society which they have prepared for them with so much foresight."^[58] Yet since the primary role of the party was educational—to form an awareness among workers of the objective possibilities for simultaneously bettering their condition and launching a revolution in the general interest—the party on Marx's account could never assume a "vanguard" role in Lenin's

sense, since the success of the party was measured only in terms of the workers it enabled to initiate cooperative action, as well as the enlightened standpoint they took. "It is the business of the International Working Men's Association to combine and generalise the spontaneous movements of the working classes, but not to dictate or impose any doctrinary system whatever."^[59] Instead, a materialist pedagogy of interest sought to transform the isolated gestures of the "I want" into the effective, organized, and self-conscious agency of the "We need, can and must"—that is, to transform the isolated struggle of the worker for survival into the self-constitution of the proletariat as a class "for itself," practically comprehending the "historical movement as a whole."

The universal interest in Marx, then, was not spontaneously generated through an unintentional "harmony" of interest, as in Smith, nor was it deciphered and imposed from above by a fair-minded elite, as in Hegel's theory of the bureaucracy. Rather, the universal interest in Marx was to be realized through a collective political struggle which simultaneously engendered solidarity among the workers, and, by making them aware of their common interest in a revolutionary transformation, made them aware of their "great historical mission," the emancipation of "the downtrodden millions."^[60]

The peculiar features Marx ascribed to interest as a subjective faculty played an essential role in his understanding of this process. As we have seen, Marx, like several theorists before him, portrayed interest as occupying an intermediate region within the panoply of human faculties, partaking of the cunning of reason and the forcefulness of passion, channeling the pressing nature of needs in a rational direction. Individuals could thus be counted on to pursue their interests with some degree of foresight and calculation as well as with steadfastness and perseverance—and it was this constant basis that a materialist pedagogy could build upon.

Let us summarize our findings, then. In Marx's understanding of human prehistory, it was enlightened interest , and not consciousness per se, or labor per se, which was the essential aspect of effective human agency. Interest was that critical subjective faculty in Marx's theory that mediated material needs and formative ideals, social conditions and self-conscious historical development, the immanent and the transcendent, the individual and the universal. The class interest of the proletariat within civil society transcended

civil society, for the proletariat, in coming to pursue its interests self-consciously, discovered that its particular emancipation entailed universal emancipation: for where all previous political movements were of minorities, "in the interest of minorities," the proletarian movement, in the familiar words of The Communist Manifesto , "is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority."^[61]