Yang Haifeng: The Thought of Totality
Since the dawn of modernity, following the transformation of social development and the progress of knowledge, we have witnessed a two-fold process: on the one hand, the system of the social division of labor has become increasingly refined and the development of knowledge increasingly specialized; on the other hand, within this division of labor and specialization, the totality of society and the totalized picture of the world seem to have grown increasingly blurred. It was in this context that philosophy sought, on the one hand, to lay a foundation of legitimacy for this transformation and development, establishing the premises and existential grounds for a new history; on the other hand, it sought to rediscover a totality for this fractured world, delineating the total picture of social life and the genealogy of knowledge.
A major aspect of the theoretical impulse of the young Lukács was his disappointment with the fragmented world and his search for totality. Korsch, meanwhile, returned to the intrinsic connection between Marx's philosophy, political economy, and scientific socialism in an attempt to re-understand Marxist philosophy. Gramsci took totality as an essential constitutive element of his theory of hegemony. They all used totality as a vital point of entry to re-understand Marx’s philosophy, thereby achieving a separation from the research tradition of the Second International [1] era and forming new lines of inquiry that exerted a profound influence on subsequent generations.
I. Totality: From Hegel to Marx
"Free thought is thought that does not accept un-examined premises." This implies that the premises of any philosophy must be subjected to reflection. In "With What Must the Beginning of Science be Made?" Hegel discusses this issue in greater detail. In his view, philosophical reflection must have an opening or starting point; this beginning must be absolute, premised on nothing, and serves as the ground for all science. However, to avoid falling into dogmatism, this beginning or starting point must also be the endpoint that has been demonstrated; in this sense, the starting point and the endpoint constitute a circle. "What is essential for science is not so much that a pure immediacy should be the beginning, but that the whole of science is in itself a circle in which the first is also the last and the last is also the first." Philosophy as a science itself constitutes a totality.
In the discussion of the three attitudes of thought toward objectivity in The Shorter Logic, Hegel further articulates a totalizing philosophical theory. First, philosophy should not divide itself internally into mutually unrelated regions; the continuity from start to finish means that no matter what different moments philosophical reflection undergoes, these moments are interconnected and inseparable. Second, the objectivity of philosophical thought is manifested not only in the objective logic of thought itself but also in the grasping of the thing itself, which implies an intrinsic communication and coordination between thought and the thing. Proceeding from this idea, Hegel criticized Kant’s practice of drawing an impassable gulf between the "thing-in-itself" [2] and thought. In this demarcation, Kant emphasized the universality and necessity of thought to distinguish it from the accidental and particular nature of sensation, thereby bringing about a fracture in philosophical thought. This fracture turns the thing-in-itself into an empty, negative existence:
The thing-in-itself (where "thing" also includes spirit and God) expresses an abstract object. — If we abstract an object from all its connections to consciousness, all sensory impressions, and all specific thoughts, we get the concept of the thing-in-itself. It is easy to see that what remains is merely an extreme abstraction, something completely empty, which can only be recognized as a "beyond" [3] that has negated representation, sensation, specific thinking, and so on. Moreover, it is equally simple to see that this remaining residuum or caput mortuum is still merely a product of thought, merely the product of the empty ego or of a pure abstractive thinking that persistently moves toward it.
Third, philosophy implies a concept of totality which is manifested not only in thinking but also in the identity of thinking and reality. The Owl of Minerva only spreads its wings at dusk, thereby achieving a totalizing examination of the Spirit. In this process, pure thought itself is fluid; this movement of pure essentialities, "regarded as the connection of its content, is the necessary development of the expansion of its content into an organic whole. By means of this movement, the path to the concept of knowledge also becomes a necessary and complete path of formation." Spirit presents truth within this totality through its externalization into an "other" and its eventual return from that "other" to itself.
Under this broad idea, Hegel used the development of concepts as an example to further discuss the issue of totality in different moments. From the perspective of the developmental process of Spirit, it undergoes a journey from sense-certainty and understanding to reason; these constitute different moments of the totality of Spirit. In these three different stages of development—sense, understanding, and reason—there is in turn a respective totality, each undergoing three moments: from immediate identity to difference, and then to dialectical unity.
For instance, when discussing self-consciousness in The Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel confirms the formation of self-consciousness through labor: in the labor process, the slave, on the one hand, accepts the consciousness of the master due to fear, but on the other hand, through the labor of "forming" or "cultivating" (Bildung) [4] things, experiences his own consciousness in the process of objectification. Only in this double-acceptance can true self-consciousness be formed. This kind of self-consciousness is, in the final analysis, an inter-subjectivity—meaning that self-consciousness contains the recognition and acknowledgment of both the consciousness of the other and the consciousness of the self. This is a thinking, free self-consciousness. Although objects in thought appear to exist as "in-itself" entities distinct from consciousness, they are in fact no different from consciousness; they are grasped in the form of concepts. This means that I am free in thought because the self is no longer situated in an external object, but is within itself.
When this freedom is elevated to the level of caprice, it implies a Stoic freedom. This freedom "maintains a lifeless tranquility which continuously withdraws from the movement of existence, from the activity of influencing others and being influenced, back into the simple reality of thought." This freedom is merely freedom within pure thought; it is only the concept of freedom, lacking living content and detached from the diversity of things. When this freedom seeks content, because it has no content of its own, such content can only be "given." When that which is in the Stoic concept is realized, Skepticism is produced. In the pure thinking of self-consciousness, there are merely distinct abstract things; here, they become distinct real things. When the formerly free self-consciousness feels itself to be free, it perceives things external to itself. At this point, freedom must be an experience of itself within the flux of changing things. Yet, once it deals with existing things, the original pure thinking feels itself to be a contingent, individual consciousness. Here, consciousness falls into a state of wavering: on the one hand, it believes that external individual things, or all things with differences, are to be totally negated; on the other hand, it easily falls into individual consciousness. At this moment, when you point out the identity of things, this skeptical self-consciousness will emphasize non-identity; when you emphasize non-identity, it will instead point out that things are identical. "In Stoicism, self-consciousness is the simple freedom of itself. In Skepticism, this freedom is realized; self-consciousness negates the other side, namely the side of determined, finite existence; but in doing so, it doubles itself, and it now becomes a thing of two sides," thereby forming the "Unhappy Consciousness." The development of this fractured Unhappy Consciousness eventually reaches a unity of the "in-itself" and "for-itself" of self-consciousness, making consciousness certain that in its individuality, it exists within absolute being-in-itself. Thus, consciousness returns once more to itself. Of course, this is not a simple repetition, but a return experienced through many mediations, forming a "minor circle" in the development of self-consciousness. This also demonstrates that self-consciousness constructs itself into a totalizing existence during its developmental process.
Although Marx critiqued Hegelian philosophy many times, this thought of totality within Hegelian philosophy was continued and became an important feature of his critique of capitalist society. In the Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx distinguished between a research method starting from the concrete reality and one starting from totality. In classical political economy, the theorists began with concrete realities such as population, which appeared to be practical and feasible. However, Marx pointed out: "Population is an abstraction if I leave out, for example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn are an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest, such as wage-labor, capital, etc." Therefore, population is a collective number—a population added up like so many potatoes—which appears concrete but is actually abstract, because here the differences between different people in the social structure are not visible at all. Determinations abstracted from such reality cannot reach an understanding of the concrete. "The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse."
Combining Marx’s relevant discussions, we can see: First, social existence and social life are a totality; any element within social existence can only be understood when placed within this totality. On the surface, population is a real existence, but if population is not placed within a specific structure of social relations, it cannot truly reflect the composition of the population across different strata; it merely becomes data in a statistical sense. Second, the totality is mediated. Hegel strongly emphasized that totality is a mediated totality; the moments of the unfolding of reason constitute the self-mediation of reason. Marx emphasized this as well: any concrete existence is a unity of many determinations, a unity of the diverse, and an existence within relations to "other" things. Third, social existence as a totality has a dominant relational structure; in capitalist society, this is capital. It is precisely this dominant relational structure that pulls everything into a constantly churning vortex, forming a totalizing existence. Here, Marx’s thought of totality not only reveals the state of social construction under the logic of capital but also points the direction for the critique of capitalist society—namely, that only through a critique of the totality of capital can the existential state of concrete entities be truly perceived.
But this does not mean that Marx's concept of totality is indistinguishable from Hegel's. First, for Hegel, the totality is a totality of spirit’s self-differentiation, self-deepening, and self-synthesis; it is the understanding and grasping of the concrete by thought. For Marx, social life itself manifests as a constantly developing and changing totality. Since the emergence of capitalist society, this has manifested as a transformation from local history to world history. Thus, the foundation of the totality is social existence. The movement of categories is the ideological expression of the process of production and reproduction of real life. Society is both the field in which this act of production occurs and the result of that act. Second, the totality of concepts is a reproduction of the totality of reality itself—a product of the thinking mind and the method used by thought to grasp the world. The developmental process of the totality of thought corresponds to the developmental process of reality itself. Marx takes the category of "labor" as an example to illustrate this characteristic of concepts. As a category of classical political economy, labor underwent a developmental process from mercantilism and the physiocrats to Adam Smith. When Smith proposed the labor theory of value, it was likewise a totalizing perspective on social life; within this perspective, Smith recognized the integrative significance of industrial production for social life. Third, within the totality of capitalist society, what truly occupies the dominant position is capital and its logic of operation. Marx believed that in all social forms, there is one specific relation of production that determines all others and occupies a position of dominance and leadership [5]. In capitalist society, this dominant and leading position is held by capital. It acts like a "special ether"; only by proceeding from capital can one understand any specific form of existence, such as agriculture or ground rent. Hegel once discussed the starting point and endpoint of philosophy, unifying the two. Looking at it inverted, within the totality of the existence of capitalist society, capital is the true starting point and endpoint. Fourth, although both emphasize totality, there is a fundamental difference in the theoretical interests of Marx and Hegel. Hegel's totality, in a socio-historical sense, points toward a totality of the relationship between capital and Reason [6], viewing Reason as a restrictive force capable of tempering the malignant development of capital—this is the practical orientation of his philosophical idea of totality. In Marx, however, there are unbridgeable rifts within the totality of capitalist society. At the level of general social structure, Marx described this through the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production; specifically in capitalist society, Marx described it through the contradictions between commodity production and exchange, and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, in order to demonstrate the transitory nature of capitalist society. Marx did not believe that capitalist society was capable of self-repair, much less that it could be reconciled through the power of Reason. This is the fundamental difference between him and Hegel.
This thought of totality was a crucial concept and method in Marx's study of the logic of capital. However, in the direct presentation of his texts, the contradictory movement of social relations and the operation of capital with its inherent contradictions became the explicit content. This was what traditional researchers were most concerned with, and the thought of totality in Marx's philosophy was never given genuine attention. Among the Marxists of the Second International era [7], a way of thinking that focused excessively on the contradictory movement of productive forces and relations of production caused the critical implications of the thought of totality in Marx’s philosophy to vanish. It was precisely upon seeing this problem that Georg Lukács, in History and Class Consciousness, caused Marx's thought of totality to reappear.
II. Lukács and the Restoration of the Thought of Totality in Marx's Philosophy
In the developmental history of Marxist philosophy since the Second International, Lukács was the first to propose the idea of rethinking Marxist philosophy through totality, thereby opening a line of inquiry distinct from the orthodox research of the time and forming the research tradition of Western Marxism.
The young Lukács was initially deeply influenced by Neo-Kantianism and completed the book Soul and Form. In this work, the young Lukács proposed a pessimistic philosophy regarding the existential predicament of modern man: in modern society, man is in a state of fragmentation; not only is man abandoned by God, but his very existence and soul are also split. At this time, Lukács wanted to use literary criticism to "re-form" life and return to the eternal values of existence.
As his thought progressed, in The Theory of the Novel, Lukács shifted from Neo-Kantianism to Hegel. Although facing the same theme—the problem of the fragmentation of the world and existence—Lukács’s solution manifested a different dimension. Using ancient Greece as a cultural template, Lukács considered it an era of "roundedness" [8], an era where the individual and the world existed in a totalizing connection. "It is a homogenous world, and even the separation between man and world, between 'I' and 'you', does not disturb its homogeneity. The soul stands at the center of the world, like every other part of this harmony." This was a life of completeness: "The completeness of this sphere constitutes the transcendental nature of their life, whereas for us this sphere has been broken; we no longer breathe in a complete world." Modern society is a society that has stepped out of transcendental completeness. If ancient Greece was a "rounded" world, modern society is a world that constantly extends into the distance; man is forever on a road without an endpoint. In this new world, man has many inventions and creations of "form," has patterns of life that constantly break boundaries, has an external world that can be infinitely explored, and has diverse forms of life; "nevertheless, this diversity sublate [9] the fundamental and positive meaning of its existence: totality." While both emphasize the fission of life, unlike in Soul and Form, Lukács expresses the "forming" of life through the idea of totality rather than a purely formal concept.
In The Theory of the Novel, Lukács's thought of totality is mainly manifested as follows: First, totality means that what exists within itself is complete. Lukács's imagination regarding ancient Greek culture belongs to this content; in his view, in the ancient Greek era, man and the external world were seamlessly integrated, constituting a complete world. Second, totality is the fundamental reality of every individual phenomenon. Everything develops toward its own perfect form within the totality and realizes its connection with the totality. Third, the totality is a totality because everything happens within it. This totality of ancient Greek culture is oriented toward the oneness of the human soul and the world; in the depths of the human soul, there is neither "inside" nor "outside"; one neither loses oneself nor thinks of going to find oneself. Fourth, totality is an existence tending toward perfection. "Only where everything is already homogeneous before the forms encompass it; only where the forms are not a compulsion but only a becoming-conscious... only where beauty makes the meaning of the world visible, is the totality of being possible." Although these discussions of Lukács possess a character of cultural utopia, the yearning for a beautiful totality and the critique of fragmented life became the driving force of his philosophical reflections at this time. This concept of totality became Lukács's point of entry for re-understanding Marx's philosophy in History and Class Consciousness.
In the essay "What is Orthodox Marxism?", Lukács points out: "Let us assume for the sake of argument that recent research had disproved once and for all every one of Marx’s individual theses. Even if this were to be proved, every serious 'orthodox' Marxist would still be able to accept all such modern conclusions without reservation and hence dismiss every single one of Marx’s theses—without having to renounce his orthodoxy for a single moment. Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx’s investigations... On the contrary, orthodoxy in questions of Marxism relates exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical Marxism is the correct method of investigation and that this method can be developed, expanded, and deepened only along the lines laid down by its founders." Here, Lukács points out that orthodox Marxism actually grasps the soul and essence of Marx's thought: the dialectical method. How is the dialectical method to be understood? At this time, Lukács had not seen the Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858 (Grundrisse), but his line of argument is very similar to Marx's introduction regarding research methods in the "1857 Introduction." Lukács likewise begins with the positivist and empirical methods popular at the time, but he goes on to point out that this method—which seemingly grasps "pure facts"—is not scientific. This is because any empirical fact is not an isolated existence but an existence within a specific objective structure; in capitalist society, these facts are existences within the capitalist social structure. "Only in this context, where the isolated facts of social life are seen as aspects of the historical process and integrated into a totality, can knowledge of the facts hope to become knowledge of reality." Here we see that Lukács believes the method of totality is the fundamental method in Marx's dialectic, and it is also the methodological basis for his critical investigation of the reified society of capitalism.
In History and Class Consciousness, totality has two meanings: first, totality as a methodology. Lukács views totality as the core of the dialectical method. Within the horizon of totality, things are interconnected and mutually mediated; they constitute a totality with internal relations. This means that concrete research must study social relations as a whole; this is not only reflected in the structural composition at the level of social existence but also means that a totalizing connection is formed between people’s consciousness and existence. This does not mean, however, that there is an undifferentiated identity between all elements within the totality; on the contrary, the relationship between them is a dynamic, developing dialectical relationship. Any specific social totality is not only a static structure but also a process of historical change. In this process, there exists a dominant factor that plays the role of governing the totality. For example, in capitalist society, this dominant factor is capital. The horizon of totality became the basic principle for Lukács’s investigation of problems.
The second meaning of totality is manifested as the ideal state of social existence. On this point, Lukács continues his early thought. Proceeding from an ideal totality, contemporary social life is "non-total"; this non-totality is mainly reflected in two aspects: the real existence of reification [10] and fragmentation, and the ideological antinomies driven by this reification and fragmentation.
In History and Class Consciousness, Lukács’s discussion of reification is undoubtedly a profound chapter, often compared to the young Marx’s discussion of alienation. Lukács’s critique of reification focuses primarily on two levels. First, drawing from Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and Capital, he points out that social relations between people have degenerated into relations between things. In the Critique of Political Economy, Marx noted: "A social relation of production appears as something existing outside of individuals, and the specific relations into which they enter in the production of their social life appear as the specific properties of a thing. This inversion, this mystification which is not imaginary but prosaically real, characterizes all social forms of labor that produce exchange-value." Here, Marx identifies the reified character of the era of generalized commodity production and exchange in capitalist society—a reification that manifests directly as commodity fetishism in Capital. Lukács cites Marx’s discussion of commodity fetishism from Capital and synthesizes it with Simmel’s critique of social reification and Weber’s discussion of rationalization, noting: "This rational objectification conceals above all the immediate—qualitative and material—character of things as things. When use-values appear without exception as commodities, they acquire a new objectivity, a new 'thing-ness' [physicality]—one they did not possess in the era of only occasional exchange—which destroys their original and authentic thing-ness." Here, Lukács distinguishes between two types of "thing-ness": the original physicality of objects and the physicality of objects after they have been commodified. This new physicality constitutes the inner core of contemporary social relations, and it is at this level that reification occurs. In commodity fetishism, Marx primarily revealed how a social world of people is presented in an inverted form as a relation between things; Lukács further reveals the concrete characteristics of reification, such as rationalization, calculability, and the resulting "enslavement of the soul" by things. It is precisely due to rationalization and calculability that social existence and human existence are decomposed into manipulable and quantifiable entities—a process that fragments the totalizing [11] picture. Second, because the mode of social and human existence becomes reified and fragmented, the totalizing picture disappears. Consequently, the return to totality [11] became the inner pursuit of modern philosophy, particularly German Classical Philosophy. Modern philosophy emerged from the reified structure of consciousness, of which the antinomy is a major expression. Kantian philosophy holds that the relationship between cognition and the object is oriented toward whether the object conforms to cognition, rather than using the object as the standard as was previously believed. This is the philosophical inversion marked by Kant’s Copernican Revolution. Consequently, the cognition of the rational subject became the core content of philosophy; the world we perceive should be the product and object of reason. Of course, Kant did not take this to its extreme; he proposed the "thing-in-itself" [12] as the limit of reason. Reason can only know the realm of phenomena; the thing-in-itself is beyond the grasp of reason. Regarding this, Lukács explains that the thing-in-itself is like Smith’s "invisible hand"—it is a world that the philosophy of that time could not reach. Thus, the world split into the knowable and the unknowable; totality is fractured in this sense, a rift that Kantian philosophy could not bridge.
If Kant’s subject-centered approach could not solve the problem of antinomies, the French materialism that proceeded from the object was equally unsuccessful. French materialism merely stated directly that contemporary capitalism had become an existence independent of human will, much like nature. This means that 18th-century French materialism was likewise a manifestation of reified consciousness.
This antinomy drove the development of German Classical Philosophy. Logically speaking, to solve this problem, one must resolve the opposition between subject and object, form and content, thereby achieving the unity of opposites within logical fluidity. This was precisely how Hegelian philosophy addressed the issue. For example, the unity of subject and object implies an inner reciprocity: the subject’s consciousness of the object is simultaneously the object’s own consciousness. Subject and object construct each other through historical development, making history a crucial field for the development of Hegelian philosophy. According to theoretical logic, Hegel should have turned toward the study of history itself rather than treating it as a footnote to reason. However, Hegel did not do so; he merely viewed history as a stage for the performance of Reason. The most important step here was taken by Marx. The significant shift in Marxist philosophy lies in moving from a focus on thought to social-historical life, thereby discussing the structure and historical changes of social existence itself and revealing the foundations upon which reified consciousness is produced. This provided a way out for fundamentally resolving the problem of antinomies.
Any philosophical critique presupposes a certain ideal state. Lukács’s critique of reification and antinomies is similarly based on an ideal totality. In this sense, totality possesses a certain ontological significance for Lukács. If this ideal totality was not yet clearly delineated in History and Class Consciousness, it was discussed extensively in later works such as The Ontology of Social Being. In The Ontology of Social Being, Lukács established an ontology of social being based on labor, arguing that this ontology constitutes the foundation of all of Marx’s economic research. "Marx's economics always proceeds from the totality of social existence and always returns to this totality." This totality is based on purposeful labor and promotes the formation of social totality through reproduction. This totality signifies not only the totality of social existence at the material level but also the totalizing connection between ideology and social production; totality in thought is the reproduction of the totality of social existence. "The consciously developed systematic critique we recognize in Marx starts from the existence of totality with the aid of the sought-after connections themselves, and attempts to understand it as closely as possible in all the complex and multifaceted relations of this totality. However, totality here is by no means a formal or conceptual totality, but rather a reproduction of that which actually exists; categories are not the building blocks of a hierarchical systematic structure, but are in fact 'forms of being, determinations of existence,' constituent elements of relatively complete real and moving complexes, whose dynamic interactions produce increasingly broader complexes in both breadth and depth."
Totality here characterized by the methodology discussed on one hand; on the other hand, it embodies an ideal state of social existence. In Lukács’s discussion, the totality of social existence is based on labor, because only in labor can human beings truly establish connections with nature, with others, and with themselves. Only in labor can social existence be endowed with purposefulness, and only at this level can freedom and human development manifest. Therefore, an ontology based on labor fundamentally provides an anthropological justification for the free development of humanity. As a totality, social existence is, in this sense, an expression of an ideal society. It is precisely because of this ideal state of totality that Lukács can offer a critique of alienation in capitalist society.
III. Totality: Korsch and Gramsci
Korsch’s discussion of Marxism was likewise directed at the orthodox interpretations of the Second International era. In response to the practice of ignoring the philosophical content of Marxism at the time, Korsch emphasized in Marxism and Philosophy that Marx’s philosophy is consistent with his thought on scientific socialism. Just as German Idealism was the philosophical expression of the German bourgeois revolution, Marx’s philosophy is the theoretical expression of the proletarian revolution. Therefore, the unity of theory and practice is the fundamental characteristic of Marxist philosophy. This also means that Marx’s philosophy permeates his thought and guides practice. What is a theory permeated by philosophical thought? "It is a theory that views and understands social development as a living totality; or more precisely, it is a theory that views social revolution as a living totality of theory and practice. At this stage, there is no doubt that any attempt to divide this totality into branches of economic, political, and ideological knowledge—even when the specific characteristics of each separated element are grasped—would be an analysis and critique departing from historical fidelity. Of course, not only economy, politics, and ideology, but also historical processes and conscious social action continuously constitute the living unity of 'revolutionary practice.' The Communist Manifesto is the best example of Marxist theory in its early, youthful vitality."
From Korsch’s discussion, it is evident that a primary characteristic of Marxist philosophy is totality. In the process of creating Marx's thought, although he absorbed many different ideas, these ideas were creatively integrated to form a social theory that conducts a totalizing examination and critique of social life, emphasizing the combination of this theory with practice. This combination constitutes a living, totalizing revolutionary theory. Even in the later stages of Marx’s thought, although this totalizing revolutionary theory was sometimes argued through different facets, it did not change the totalizing character of Marxist philosophy. With the development of society and the evolution of knowledge itself, in the later expressions of Marx and Engels, Marxism—as a totalizing picture of knowledge—seemed increasingly decomposed into different disciplines, such as philosophy, political economy, the dialectics of nature, and scientific socialism. The umbilical cord of natural connection between these different branches of knowledge seemed to have broken, a phenomenon that led latecomers to decompose Marx’s thought into distinct objects of knowledge. Korsch believed this was a misunderstanding. For Marx and Engels, the totalizing theory was never replaced by independent theoretical elements; in particular, the connection between philosophy and other parts constituted an essential feature of Marxism. When philosophical thought is disregarded, it is precisely a vulgarization of Marxism. This is a major reason why he emphasized the need to re-discuss Marx’s "philosophy." Consequently, Korsch strongly opposed dividing Marxist philosophy into different factors and performing empirical analyses on them to increase the "scientificity" of Marxism. Doing so does not deepen the understanding of Marxism; rather, it limits the totalizing and critical character of Marxist philosophy in a modern capitalist manner.
This orientation in Korsch’s thought is even more evident in Karl Marx: Marxist Theory and the Class Movement. The book is divided into three parts: the first discusses the relationship between Marxist revolutionary theory and the sociology emerging at the time; the second addresses the relationship between Marxist revolutionary theory and the critique of political economy; and the third explores the philosophical connotations of Marxist revolutionary theory. Throughout his specific discussions, Korsch consistently focuses on the totalizing [N] connections of these ideas within Marxist theory, particularly the internal links between Marxism’s constituent parts. For instance, when discussing the critique of political economy, Korsch emphasizes that Marx’s critique originates from a revolutionary standpoint. Linked to the previous discussion on revolutionary theory and practice, this means Marx’s critique of political economy possesses an internal connection with his philosophical thought. Only by realizing the transformation from "philosophical idealism" to "materialist science" could Marx transcend the limits of reformed classical political economy and form an original theory of the critique of political economy. Korsch argues that it was only after the 1850s that Marx formulated the fully developed form of his materialist theory: "It is both political economy and, at the same time, a critique of political economy... It reveals economic concepts and fundamental principles, including the most general ones, as the 'fetishistic' [13] masked expressions of existing social relations, being merely the historically valid laws of a specific era of a socio-economic formation." Within the critique of political economy, although the direct object of Marx's analysis is capital, the actual object is "labor." This labor is no longer the labor of early capitalism—where workers still possessed their own actual means of production and exchanged the products of labor as commodities with other labor—but specifically refers to "wage labor" separated from the material means of production; that is, labor under the oppression of capital. The fundamental intent of the critique of political economy lies in the realization of socialism, which determines the correlation between Marx's critique and scientific socialism. If divorced from this connection, it is impossible to grasp Marxism as a totality. The totality in a methodological sense emphasized by Korsch is, in fact, the key point we should focus on when rereading him today.
Similar to Korsch, Gramsci likewise emphasized the concept of totality in Marxist research. When discussing what constitutes Marxist orthodoxy, Gramsci pointed out that Marxist orthodoxy is not guaranteed by any specific adherent, nor is it to be evidenced by searching through external, non-Marxist currents of thought. Rather, Marxism is "self-sufficient" (autosufficiente). "This concept of 'self-sufficiency' not only constructs all the basic elements needed for a comprehensive, complete worldview and a comprehensive theory of philosophy and natural science but also contains all the elements needed to animate a complete practical social organization and transform it into a comprehensive, complete civilization."
Gramsci emphasized that Marxism is a totality, manifested in two aspects. First, regarding the fundamental characteristics of Marxism, philosophy and politics—or theory and practice—constitute a whole. For example, he believed that Marx and Lenin represented two distinct stages: Marx founded a new worldview, while Lenin put this worldview into practice. Marx and Lenin embody the most fundamental historical unity of theory and practice, a unity that was the result of the development of Western civilization. "The Renaissance and the Reformation, German philosophy and the French Revolution, Darwinism and English classical political economy, the liberalism of giants and the historicism rooted in the entire modern view of life. The philosophy of praxis [14] is the culmination of this entire spiritual and moral reform movement, forming a dialectic between opposing mass culture and high culture. It realized the combination of the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution: it is both a philosophy of politics and a politics of philosophy."
Second, Gramsci emphasized that a totalizing correlation exists between the important constituent elements of Marxism. Aiming at the tendency at the time to bifurcate Marxism into philosophy, political economy, and politics, Gramsci noted that dividing Marx's thought into three parts reflects a genetic exploration of historical sources; in reality, however, these contents cannot be separated from the philosophy of praxis to emphasize their individual values. These elements are intertwined within an organic totality. If philosophy, economics, and politics constitute the component elements of the philosophy of praxis, then in "their theoretical principles, there must necessarily be the possibility of convertibility from one activity to another, and the possibility of translating each into the specific language suited to every other component element. Any one element is contained in the other two, and these three elements together constitute a homogeneous circle." For example, when discussing Ricardo, Gramsci emphasized the need to establish internal links between Ricardo, Hegel, and Robespierre. These are three different currents of thought; to establish a connection between them, one must break any a priori [N] assumptions and reveal the similarity of their problems within a historical context. This is the historicism of the philosophy of praxis that Gramsci emphasized.
Third, proceeding from Marx's perspective of totality, Gramsci emphasized when discussing hegemony that hegemony is a theory integrating politics, economy, and culture. In the common understanding of hegemony, people often simplify it into a theory of cultural hegemony, which is actually a misunderstanding. Gramsci believed that if workers can achieve hegemony in the economic sphere, it would be of great significance for the revolution and liberation of workers. In his early years, when he initiated factory councils and organized workers to learn technology, his intention was to let workers master the production process by mastering technology, thereby obtaining an economic hegemony. He likewise emphasized political hegemony; although he joined the Communist Party of Italy, unlike the ultra-leftist [15] ideas then present within the party, Gramsci did not ignore the struggle for political legitimacy. These reflections do not contradict his emphasis on cultural hegemony; it could even be said that when the proletariat is unable to obtain economic or political hegemony, strengthening cultural hegemony becomes a possible path for the proletariat to change itself and the world.
As the first generation of foreign Marxists [16], Lukács, Korsch, and Gramsci grasped one of the most important contents of Marxist philosophy—the totalizing investigation of social life—to reconstruct the theoretical tradition and essential content of Marxist philosophy. This played a positive role in breaking away from the mechanized Marxism of the Second International [17] era and restoring the vitality of Marxist philosophy. By re-discussing the relationship between Marx and Hegel, they introduced the problem of subjectivity in Marx's philosophy into the discussion of totality, forming various interpretive approaches. Although the three share many commonalities, the differences between them are also very distinct: by comparison, Lukács is more like a philosopher, full of theoretical radicalism and imagination, whose critique of reification [18] derived from philosophy possesses a very strong power of social penetration; while Korsch also emphasized the philosophical content of Marx, he was more willing to explore the links between philosophy, political economy, and socialism in Marx's thought, a point particularly evident in his book Karl Marx; Gramsci, proceeding from Italian reality, focused more on the connection between Marx's thought and reality, emphasizing the integration of politics, economy, and culture, presenting the image of a theoretically sophisticated revolutionary. Together, these three restored and reconstructed the theory of totality in Marxist philosophy, thereby forming an alternative approach different from the orthodox research of that time. They exerted a profound influence on later scholars, particularly from the 1930s to the 1960s, directly influencing the Frankfurt School and driving the theoretical development of foreign Marxism.