Why Marx or Nietzsche

Why Marx or Nietzsche?

AndrÐ"ÐŽs GedÐ"¶

The world in which we ourselves exist intellectually is a world largely molded by Marx and Nietzsche.

—Max Weber

1

In the history of the debates about Marx and/or Nietzsche, the desire for reconciling Marx with Nietzsche, for abandoning the choice, Marx or Nietzsche, has perhaps never come forth so plainly as today. At the same time, the alternative, either Marx or Nietzsche, was perhaps never more visibly in the focus of the philosophical dispute. The paradox and the ambiguity of contemporary discussions about the Marx-Nietzsche relationship ensue from the simultaneity and juxtaposition of these two tendencies.

Acknowledgment of the relatedness of Marx and Nietzsche, acceptance of their complementarity, and synthesis of both are demanded from divergent standpoints, from the left and the right, with opposite value judgments. On the one hand, a Marx located in Nietzsche's neighborhood or interpreted and supplemented according to a Nietzschean framework is affirmed; on the other, the nihilistic essentials allegedly common to Marx and Nietzsche are denied as much in the name of the traditional faith in revelation1 as in that of a well-functioning, trouble-free capitalism.2 Advocates of French Nietzscheanism, conceiving themselves, at least temporarily, as situated on the left, inclined toward combining Nietzsche with Marx. Klossowski tried to draw a parallel between the social criticism of Marx and Nietzsche (1973, 99–101). Lyotard strove in the early seventies to reinterpret Marx's Capital with reference to Nietzsche (1973, 145||ff.), and Foucault presumed in the midsixties to find a common denominator in Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud (1994, 564||ff.). It is, however, a sign of the fragility of the intended reconciliation of Marx and Nietzsche that Foucault announced the Marx-Nietzsche alternative quite harshly and unambiguously (and his philosophical work is marked by this alternative), while he stated that Hegel and Marx were “the ones who bear great responsibility for contemporary humanism,” which was rejected by Foucault. He advocated a “nondialectic” and “therefore nonhumanistic” culture that began with Nietzsche and “appeared in Heidegger too” (cited in Ferry and Renaut 1985, 138).3 This approach of confronting Nietzsche with Marx prevailed in the later development of French Nietzscheanism; the (exclusive) disjunction of Marx and Nietzsche overcame their conjunction.

Deleuze emphasized in his early book on Nietzsche the incompatibility of dialectics and Nietzschean philosophizing, the underlying and overwhelming antidialectic of Nietzsche's philosophy.4 In pleading for “nomadic thinking,5 he also opposed the alleged trio Marx-Nietzsche-Freud and moved Nietzsche out of this supposed trio. “Marx and Freud are perhaps the dawn of our culture, but Nietzsche is quite other, he is the dawn of a counterculture” (1973, 160). The antidialectical Nietzsche versus Marx is the point of reference of French—and not only French—philosophical postmodernism.

Nevertheless, one of the trends within the contemporary third Nietzsche renaissance is the endeavor to bring to the fore a reconciliation of Marx and Nietzsche by evoking the historical traditions of left Nietzscheanism, the images of Marx accommodated to Nietzsche or of Nietzsche accommodated to Marx. It embraces present versions of the narrow current of the Nietzschean Left and of a Nietzschean Marxism that allegedly refer to the permanent crisis of Marxism (Batrick and Breines 1978, 119||ff.). The effort of this current to legitimize a Nietzschean Marxism and establish its relevance is reminiscent of the Nietzschean leanings of some Russian revolutionaries who supported Marxism in the first decade of the twentieth century (see Kline 1969, 166–67). A concise exposition of these contemporary endeavors to Nietzscheanize Marx states that there is “a crisis of that tradition of Marxism . . . in which were captured the advocates of the polar contrast `Nietzsche-Marx' from Mehring to LukÐ"ÐŽcs, from Hans GÐ"јnther to Holz” and that the counterposition to this tradition and viewpoint demands embracing of “a residue of Nietzsche's thinking that was alien to Marx and was not accepted by Marxism” (Masini 1981, 34). According to this view, Nietzsche's alternative to that which he opposed was not positive—in fact, it was nonrevolutionary in the Marxian sense. Nevertheless, this claims that a revolutionary content is inherent in Nietzsche's surmounting of humanism, while this Nietzschean surmounting of humanism is located beyond Marx; the residue of Nietzsche's thinking that one is asked to accept lies in the themes of “the destructuring of the subject . . . the infinite game between depth and surface” (34). It is a paradox of demanding a reconciliation of Marx and Nietzsche that the contrast between them is a premise and a consequence of this demanded reconciliation. It is a premise insofar as the disparity of Marx's and Nietzsche's frameworks is the starting point of this approach; it is the stated reason for supporting Nietzsche's philosophy, because the helplessness and inability of Marxism to look into the genuine depth of life are taken for granted. It is also a consequence of this approach, insofar as the “residue” that we are asked to accept and incorporate into Marxism belongs to the philosophical whole, to an antisystematic system alien to Marx's thought, just as it is alien to rational philosophizing in general. Attempting to reconcile Marx and Nietzsche reproduces the confrontation of both, instead of surmounting it.

2

The influence of Nietzsche and the attempted conjunction of Marx and Nietzsche had a molding impact not only on Adorno,6 but also on Ernst Bloch and Althusser, although they did not cope with it. This moment was irreconcilable with their ideas borrowed from Marx and Marxism, impairing nevertheless the reception and interpretation