PREFACE HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS heavily stressed. There will beno assessment of theeconomiccontent attempt to diverge from them, to improve or correct them. The of the theory of accumulation, nor of Marx,'s economic theories as goal of these arguments is an interpretation, an exposition of Marx's such: we shall confine our discussion to their methodologica heory as Marx understood it. But this orthodoxy'does not in the premisses and implications. It will in any case be obvious to east strive to preserve what Mr. von Struve calls the 'aesthetic reader that the present writer upholds the validity of their content. integrity of Marxs system. On the contrary, our underlying Secondly, a detailed analysis of Rosa Luxemburg's thought premise here is the belief that in Marx's theory and method the necessary because its seminal discoveries no less than its errors true method by which to understand society and history has finally have had a decisive influence on the theories of marxists outside been discovered. This method is historical through and through Russia, above all in Germany. To some extent this influence It is self-evident, therefore, that it must be constantly applied to persists to this day. For anyone whose interest was first aroused itself, and this is one of the focal points of these essays. At the by these problems a truly revolutionary, Communist and Marxist same time this entails taking up a substantive position with regard ition can be acquired only through a critical confrontation to the urgent problems of the present; for according to this view ith the theoretical life's work of rosa lux of Marxist method its pre-eminent aim is knowledge of the present. Once we take this path we discover that the writings and Our preoccupation with methodology in these essays has left speeches of Lenin become crucial, methodologically speaking. It is little space for an analysis of the concrete problems of the present. not our intention to concern ourselves here with Lenins political For this reason the author would like to take this opportunity achievements. But just because our task is consciously one-sided to state unequivocally that in his view the experiences of th and limited it is essential that we remind ourselves constantly of years of revolution have provided a magnificent confirmation of Lenin,'s importance as a theoretician for the development of all the essential aspects of orthodox (i.e. Communist)Marxism. Marxism. This has been obscured for many people by his over.I The war, the crisis and the Revolution, not excluding the so-called slower tempo in the development of the Revolution and the new importance of each of his utterances for the particular moment in,i economic policy of Soviet russia have not thrown up a single which they are made is always so great as to blind some people problem that cannot be solved by the dialectical method-and to the fact that, in the last resort, he is only so effective in practice by that method alone. The concrete answers to particular practical because of his greatness, profundity and fertility as a theoretician. problems lie outside the framework of these essays. The task they His effectiveness rests on the fact that he has developed the is to make us aware of Marxist method, to throw light practical essence of Marxism to a pitch of clarity and concreteness on it as an unendingly fertile source of solutions to otherwise never before achieved. He has rescued this aspect of Marxism from an almost total oblivion and by virtue of this theoretical This is also the purpose of the copious quotations from the action he has once again placed in our hands the key to a right understanding of Marxist method all too plentiful. But every quotation is also an interpretation. and For it is our task-and this is the fundamental conviction it seems to the present writer that many very relevant aspects of the Marxist method have been unduly neglected, above all those method and to apply it correctly. In no sense do we aspire to which are indispensable for understanding the coherent structure of that method from the point of view of logic as well as content improveon it. If or Engels'are made the object of a polemical attack this has beer As a consequence done, as every perceptive reader will observe, in the spirit of the to understand the life nerve of that method, namely the dialectic ystem as a whole. On these particular points the author believes, We cannot do justice to the concrete, historical dialectic rightly or wrongly, that he is defending orthodox Marxism without considering in some detail the founder of this method, Hegel, and his relation to Marx. Marx's warning not to treat d dog has gone unheeded e adhe Marx's doctrine