Do 'Great Men' Drive History ?

1. In November 2022, I was reading The 18^th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and the following famous sentence from near the beginning struck me forcefully:

 

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."

 

You may say - so what ? That's blindingly obvious. But, having thought about the process of History through many specific historical sequences of events over the years, the endless controversy over whether history is primarily driven by 1) Great Individuals or primarily by 2) underlying technological, economic, ideological and social forces, bothered me. Because of course, it's a blend of both. I think a lot of modern historians incline to the second view, because the first view held sway for so long, but also because they are frightened of seeming naive, or of being regarded as power-worshippers. Conversely, some historians such as Andrew Roberts proudly incline to the first view, partly because they genuinely believe it, & partly because they take an impish delight in being deliberately old-fashioned & going against the current trend. Whereas, as I have said, it becomes obvious when you study history that it is a blend of both. I could illustrate this endlessly.

'Bonaparte, First Consul' by Antoine-Jean Gros, 1802

 

Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

Otto von Bismarck

One example: what if there had been no Napoleon ? What course would the French Revolution have taken ? Without Napoleon's campaigns and conquests, would German unification or Italian unification have happened in the way that they did ? or happened at all ? Possibly not. The implications of either are staggering. The underlying technological, economic, ideological and social forces enabled Napoleon, but he focussed them and pointed them in a certain direction which had specific consequences, and not other potential consequences which could have happened. History is a constant series of potential branches: one is actually taken, which rules out/nullifies the other possibilities, and generates a new set of possible branches; one of those is taken, and so on ad infinitum. This process operates in the lives of all individuals as well. All the acts and decisions of everyone interact constantly. That makes up the sum total of the world. That is what history is made of. 

 

You can see that in trying to explain my observation that the historical process is a blend of both the will of great individuals and underlying social forces, I'm having to go somewhat around the houses. That is what is so exciting to me about Marx' dictum, quoted above. It is a succinct, elegant and unanswerable distillation of the point I'm trying to make. In other words, this issue is now

 

and there is no need to reinvent the wheel, and no point in trying*. The wheel has been invented, it's a perfectly good wheel, and works very well. This is one great advantage of having a culture. Certain controversies have actually been solved. If anyone ever raises the debate to me, or I read the issue being questioned - is it great individuals or the ineluctable underlying forces that drive history ? - all I have to do is point them at The 18^th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. (written 22.11.2022)

2. Barbara Cottman once asked me "Do you see history as linear or circular ?" These are my thoughts on that subject.

Evidently it depends what you mean by the terms 'linear' and 'circular'. What I think you mean is: 'linear' means political and economic progress in their broadest sense is inevitable and always advancing overall despite setbacks; 'circular' means we take two steps forward and one back, or two steps forward and two back, or even two steps forward and three back.

History is linear in the sense that time advances irretrievably, there is no going back, one thing happens after another. It is not linear in the sense that progress overall is inevitable. Nor is regression inevitable. Nothing is inevitable except our individual death, pace Benjamin Franklin. History does not have intention, or any inner purpose. It is not heading anywhere. History in the sense of a thing that has intention does not exist, and anyone who thinks it does exist in that sense is in my opinion mistaking metaphors, figures of speech and mental shortcuts for reality: which is a very common error. Speaking technically, history is not teleological. There are many teleological accounts of how history works, where it is heading. For instance, fundamental to Christianity is a claim about the nature of history: that there is an inevitable progression from Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, the Fall; to the possibility of redemption provided by Christ's death and resurrection; closing inevitably with the Last Judgement. Marx regards the victory of the proletariat in the class struggle as inevitable. Other commentators have regarded the expansion and ultimate triumph of liberal democracy as inevitable. The attraction of such accounts is clear: they give the individual structure, purpose and comfort. However they are in my view illusions.

Which is not to say that there is no such thing as progress. There is progress, but it is neither inevitable nor irreversible. (Written 13.3.2023).

 

*Of course the issue is not solved, nor ever can be, and of course this is an absurdly cursory treatment of it. I propose to look at this issue in much greater detail by examining the extreme positions on either side: first with a critique of Carlyle's 'On Heroes'; then with a critique of Tolstoy's views on history at the end of 'War and Peace'. Stay tuned.

 

Kolakowski: Marx on Ideology

 

Leszek Kolakowski

Leszek Kolakowski wrote a three-volume classic called 'The Main Currents of Marxism'. The first volume, 'The Founders', was originally drafted in 1968, & first published in English in 1978, translated by P.S.Falla. I want to share with you a long quote from it in which Kolakowski summarises Marx' and Engels' understanding of the concept of ideology, sparked by his discussing 'The German Ideology'. 

"In the work of Marx and Engels 'ideology' is used in a peculiar sense which was later generalized: they do not define it expressly, but it is clear that they give it the meaning later expounded by Engels in Ludwig Feuerbach (1888) and in a letter to Mehring dated 14 July 1893. 'Ideology' in this sense is a false consciousness or an obfuscated mental process in which men do not understand the forces that actually guide their thinking, but imagine it to be wholly governed by logic and intellectual influences. When thus deluded, the thinker is unaware that all thought, and particularly his own, is subject in its course and outcome to extra-intellectual social conditions, which it expresses in a form distorted by the interests and preferences of some collectivity or other. Ideology is the sum total of ideas (views, convictions, partis pris) relating, first and foremost, to social life —opinions on philosophy, religion, economics, history, law, utopias of all kinds, political and economic programmes— which appear to exist in their own right in the minds of those who hold them. These ideas are in fact governed by laws of their own; they are characterized by the subject’s unawareness of their origin in social conditions and of the part they play in maintaining or altering those conditions. The fact that human thought is determined by the conflicts of material life is not consciously reflected in ideological constructions, or they would not truly deserve the name of ideology. The ideologist is the intellectual exponent of a certain situation of social conflict; he is unaware of this fact and of the genetic and functional relationship between the situation and his ideas. All philosophers are ideologists in this sense; so are religious thinkers and reformers, jurists, the creators of political programmes, etc. It was not until much later, in Stalin’s time, that Marxists came to use 'ideology' to denote all forms of social consciousness, including those that were supposed to present a scientific account of the world, free from mystification and distortion. In this sense it was possible to speak of 'scientific', of 'Marxist' ideology, which Marx and Engels, given their use of the term, could never have done."

- ch. 8, p.154

Friedrich Engels

Karl Marx

For Marx and Engels therefore the term Ideology is always pejorative, never neutral or positive.

I think this passage is extremely powerful. It is a warning and a test always to be borne in mind when presented with any given system of ideas, or the ideological justification for a given system of power or economic system - 'ideological' here in the commonly used modern sense. But this test must be used with caution. I do not actually agree that all systems of ideas originate in social conditions. I think it is an over-simplification. As so often with explanations, it is a thing which is sometimes true wrongly expanded to be always true. The genuine power of the ideas in this passage lies in applying them where they really do apply.

Pierre Bourdieu

Doesn't this passage anticipate one of Bourdieu's main ideas ? When it says, "These ideas ... are characterized by the subject’s unawareness of their origin in social conditions and of the part they play in maintaining or altering those conditions", this is surely Bourdieu's concept of misrecognition. (I'm not attacking Bourdieu, I think he is utterly brilliant.)

Sigmund Freud

Isn't this also an example of Marxism paralleling Freudianism ? The ideologist presents their apparent content, but they are unaware of the latent content, which the Marxist interpreter is aware of and can point out to the ideologist - the unstated content being the significant part, which alters and rectifies the meaning of the apparent or surface content.

Obviously, if used crudely or dishonestly these ideas are capable of being abused. For instance, if it is always someone else and never you who is the ideologist, someone else and never you who has false consciousness. They can also be misused as a bid for power on the part of the interpreter, the critic. A Marxist or Freudian critic can say to me, "You say x, but I know you really mean y" when in fact I intend, mean and have expressed x. This is the tedious, unproductive game of critics who use deconstruction. They always know better, though what exactly or why it matters are never clear. 

Jacques Derrida

It is curious to note that Plato in the 370s BCE, although he did not use the term, understood perfectly well that an ideology could function as means of social control; in fact he has Socrates propose to manufacture an origin story for his imaginary community for precisely this purpose. This is in 'The Republic' 414b-415, where Socrates talks about deliberately creating various myths to: a) create social solidarity between the guardians, their auxiliaries and the rest of the community; b) get everyone to accept and internalise their place in the social hierarchy; c) get the guardians to accept that their children do not automatically inherit their status, they have to be capable of filling the position, and similarly that children of lower social grades who have the right aptitude can and indeed must be promoted. (How capability or aptitude will be judged in practice is something Plato is vague about, a recurring weakness in 'The Republic'. His answer is - it will be judged by the right people in the right way, which is as much as to say, "Don't bother me about details.")

Plato, depicted generically. Nobody knows what he really looked like.

A sample from the section of 'The Republic' referred to above to illustrate:

"'Now,' I said, 'can we devise one of those lies - the kind which crop up as occasion demands ... - so that with a single noble lie we can indoctrinate the rulers themselves, preferably, but at least the rest of the community ?'

'What sort of lie ?' [Glaucon] said.

'Nothing too outlandish,' I replied. (414b-c) . . .

. .  . I said, 'All the same, do please listen to the rest of the story as well. "Although all of you citizens are brothers," we'll continue the tale by telling them, "nevertheless, during the kneading phase, God included gold in the mixture when he was forming those of you who have what it takes to be rulers (which is why the rulers have the greatest privileges), silver when he was forming the auxiliaries, and iron and copper when he was forming the farmers and other workers."" (415a)

And I thought propaganda began with Edward Bernays . . .