EPILOGUE

In a sense, the appropriate ending of this essay is contained in its beginning: for the greatest accomplishment of "existential Marxism" may well be the standpoint it has provided for rereading Marx himself, and for uncovering the visionary theorist of individual emancipation behind the critic of classical political economy. Thanks to the special emphases of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, as well as to the numerous Marx manuscripts published only within the past fifty years, it has become possible to restore the integrity of Marx's thinking, and to demonstrate the importance he assigned to subjective agency, as well as to individuation: a true communist society would transfigure human existence.

Of course, this rereading of Marx has not supported all of the polemical points of interpretation associated with Sartre and Merleau-Ponty; but it has cast Marx's characteristic doctrine of historical necessity in a new light that forecloses any purely objectivistic interpretation (such as that currently associated with Louis Althusser), or any cant denigrating claims for individuation as "the old liberal rhetoric" (to quote Lucio Colletti's epithet).^[1]

As has been shown in detail, Marx himself consistently lauded individuation as a paramount progressive tendency of history. Similarly, while he advanced a deterministic theory of economics and history, he did so only on the basis provided by rational human agency: because he assumed that men calculated shrewdly in pursuing their material affairs, he could construct a science of political economy; because proletarians could perceive their common interest in a social revolution which would extend the scope of freedom, a practical sense of progress and the meaning of history seemed possible as well.

At the same time, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty have contributed, not merely to the rediscovery but also to the redefinition of the Marxist understanding of subjectivity. Merleau-Ponty has elaborated the valid core of Marx's understanding: his view of humans as sentient, embodied beings, sociable creatures who define themselves through an endless variety of tasks and roles, through the creation of durable works that can be shared with others. But while MerleauPonty's phenomenology enlarged Marx's image of the individuality liberated through communism, Sartre's philosophy of existence illuminated the inertia and fear of freedom jeopardizing Marx's project. Both Merleau-Ponty and Sartre denied not only the determinism of evolutionary positivism but also the native rationality of the human subject. Their redefinition of subjectivity thus went to the heart of Marx's original understanding by questioning the primacy of purposeful labor and enlightened interest among the modes of being human. Yet as Sartre insisted, their intention was never "to give the irrational its due" but instead to reduce the "indetermination and non-knowledge" eroding the subjective foundations of Marx's theory. Together, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty have helped clarify a number of vital issues affecting the sense of subjectivity and individuation in Marxism.

They have shown the significant freedom of human beings and the impossibility of a predictive science of society; they have also described the subjective as well as historical grounds of human institutions, and thus the necessity of interpreting conventional social relations as intrinsically open-ended and mutable, however fixed they may appear. They have examined the role of habitual, unthinking action in sustaining such inert institutions and the importance of cultivating freedom and rationality as well as individuality, with an awareness that these are problematic acquisitions of fallible human beings, rather than increasingly universal values fostered by historical development and exhibiting the "fixity of popular prejudice." Finally, they have indicated, if only indirectly, the urgency of creating new situations and conceiving new institutions that will encourage men to emancipate themselves—institutions that ultimately will enable men to become free individuals rather than the powerless subjects of the prevailing socialist and capitalist systems.

To be sure, these accomplishments have not been without problems, especially severe ones in the case of Sartre's dualistic ontology,

as has been noted. But one particularly troubling problem common to both Sartre and Mcrleau-Ponty is worth stressing: despite their incisive criticism of Marx's rationalism and determinism, both were reluctant to extend their phenomenological philosophy to Marx's theory of history. Indeed, Merleau-Ponty's own phenomenology, consistently elaborated, discredited any univocal interpretation of history and raised instead the prospect of unsynchronized multiple histories. Similarly, Sartre's description of the fear of truth, which he once called "that thing of indefinite approximation," should have warned him of the dangers in attempting to establish a "Truth" of history, or in trying to validate a "dialectical Reason" a priori. In addition to enriching their understanding of subjectivity and individuation, Marxism for Mcrleau-Ponty and Sartre too often functioned as a secular faith that blunted their doubt and blurred their distinctive vision. As a result, their "existential Marxism" did not always adequately meet the challenge to a rationalist theory of history contained in the thought of Nietzsche and Heidegger. Nor did it consistently amplify the most promising, if difficult, implications of their own existential phenomenology—such as the uncertainties inherent in a theory of history grounded in human existence. But then, a Truth of History is more reassuring than an existence whose meaning may be suspended by an unanticipated turn of events, a failure of virtù , a lack of care and commitment.

This observation, as well as the trajectory of Merleau-Ponty's career, inevitably raises the difficult question of the value of Marxism today. This question cannot be resolved on a purely philosophical basis: Marx's sociology of classes is involved, as are his characteristic economic categories and hypotheses. Moreover, the present essay has by no means examined all of the relevant contemporary proposals for the renewal of Marxist philosophy; these range from the phenomenological accounts of the Italian philosopher Enzo Pad and the Czech theoretician Karel Kosik to the critical theory of Jürgen Habermas.

But if I may nevertheless hazard a personal opinion, it would be that Marxism has indeed not turned out to be true in most of the ways Marx had anticipated: the rate of profit has not declined in the fashion foreseen by Marx, the lot of the worker has not steadily deteriorated, industrial society has not polarized into two self-consciously hostile camps, and class conflict has not proven to be the

school for enlightened interest Marx expected. As a result, a proletarian revolution has yet to occur in any advanced industrial country. Instead, Marx's concept of the proletariat as the harbinger of true humanity has become the ideological property of mass parties in the parliamentary political arena, while in avowedly "communist" one-party states, the proletariat as universal class has become a myth cloaking universal domination. In defiance of Marx's hope, communism has come to mean "labor camps, plus electrification." Merleau-Ponty's conclusions thus seem warranted: it is doubtful whether a Marxism stripped of rationalist assumptions, its allegiance to the proletariat, and most of its economic prognoses, any longer merits the name Marxism.

On the other hand, a project like the one Marx originally undertook, of supplying insight into the practical possibilities for extending the range of human freedom, seems to me central to any social theory that does not simply assume fatalistically the given social conditions. Merleau-Ponty himself eloquently made the case for retaining, even in the face of adversity, this kind of transcending outlook on history: such a philosophy "awakens us to the importance of daily events and action. For it is a philosophy which arouses in us a love for our times which are not the simple repetition of human eternity nor merely the conclusion to premises already postulated. It is a view which like the most fragile object of perception—a soap bubble, or a wave—or like the most simple dialogue, embraces indivisibly all the order and all the disorder of the world."^[2] The problem, as Merleau-Ponty's own work illustrates, is to maintain such a transcending outlook without succumbing to the chimera that history climaxes teleologically in a "final goal," or the illusion that Marxism provides a necessary and sufficient standpoint for interpreting this ambiguous and inherently heterogeneous process. For the central categories of Marxism are as subject to decay as the capitalist society they were intended to help dissolve. Such problems, however, bear witness not merely to the limitations of a particular thinker, or even to the inadequacies of a particular theory, but also, and more fundamentally, to the difficulties in formulating a thoroughgoing critique of contemporary society that is actively oriented toward the possibilities for a better form of life without being arbitrary.

Theodor Adorno expressed these difficulties well.

The only philosophy which can be responsibly practiced in face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption. . . . Perspectives must be fashioned that displace and estrange the world, reveal it to be, with its rifts and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will appear one day in the messianic light. To gain such perspective . . . is the simplest of things . . . but it is also the utterly impossible thing. . . . Even its own impossibility it must at last comprehend for the sake of the possible. But beside the demand thus placed on thought, the question of the reality or unreality of redemption itself hardly matters.^[3]

As the present essay has endeavored to show, the perceptions generated by such a philosophy applied to the issue of individuation are not insignificant: from the perspectives this philosophy affords, individuation appears a frail accomplishment, threatened from without by economic as well as political forms of domination and from within by the fear of being different. But the idea of the authentically free individual is kept alive in the philosophy's commitment to exploring alternative social forms capable of cultivating the expressive and rational capabilities of human beings, as well as satisfying their material needs. That Marxism has not yet created or even always adequately conceived the appropriate social forms is true enough; yet the challenge remains, with the dignity and freedom of being human at stake.

Individuation, a question of autonomy, self-expression, and a personal commitment to freedom, as well as a matter of material well-being, is then seen as the endowment, not of a monadically self-reliant agent, but rather of a person open to, and realizing his aims through, the institutions he inhabits. Without the tools and knowledge to objectify himself, without the respect that would dignify these personal powers, without the opportunity to participate actively in the life of society, without the confidence and real possibility to shape effectively his own existence—without these, the individual may appear as an actor endowed with a formal liberty, and even with a certain inherent particularity, but he remains in fact a prisoner of circumstance, enmeshed in a web of events which manifest a contrary logic. The sense of subjectivity is thus bound up in a world that must become the individual's own. For, as Hegel remarked, "The concrete self-feeling of even the strongest natures

requires a certain range of external relationships, an adequate portion, so to speak, of the universe; for without such an individual world the human soul . . . would have no individuality at all, and would not attain to a specifically distinct individuality."^[4] A philosophy committed to realizing this vision of individuation will, on principle, pursue its aims with practical intentions, through an understanding of oppressive social relations and the possibilities for freedom they conceal: that is the authentic legacy of Marxism.