Paul Mattick
Encyclopedia
Paul Mattick Sr. was a Marxist political writer and social revolutionary, whose thought can be placed within the council communist and left communist traditions. He is survived by his son Paul Mattick Jr., also a council communist.
Throughout his life he continually criticised Bolshevism, Lenin and Leninist Marxism and organisational methods, describing their political legacy as:
parentage in Pomerania
in 1904 and raised in Berlin
by class-conscious parents, Mattick at the age of 14 was already a member of the Spartacists
' Freie Sozialistische Jugend. In 1918, he started to study as a toolmaker at Siemens AG
, where he was also elected as the apprentices' delegate on the workers' council of the company during the German Revolution
.
Implicated in many actions during the revolution, arrested several times and threatened with death, Mattick radicalized along the left and oppositional trend of the German Communists. After the "Heidelberg
" split of the Communist Party of Germany
(KPD; a successor to the Spartacist League) and the formation for the Communist Workers Party of Germany
(KAPD) in the spring of 1920, he entered the KAPD and worked in the youth organization Rote Jugend, writing for its journal.
In 1921, at the age of 17, Mattick moved to Cologne
to find work with Klockner
for a while, until strikes
, insurrections and a new arrest destroyed every prospect of employment. He was active as an organizer and agitator in the KAPD and the AAU in the Cologne region, where he got to know Jan Appel
among others. Contacts were also established with intellectuals, writers and artists working in the AAUE founded by Otto Rühle
.
With the continuing decline of radical mass struggle and revolutionary hopes, especially after 1923, and having been unemployed for a number of years, Mattick emigrated to the United States
in 1926, whilst still maintaining contacts with the KAPD and the AAUE in Germany.
. In addition, the publication of Henryk Grossman
's principal work, Das Akkumulations - and Zusammenbruchsgesetz des Kapitalistischen Systems (1929), played a fundamental role for Mattick, as Grossmann brought Marx's theory of accumulation, which had been completely forgotten, back to the centre of debate in the workers' movement. To Mattick, Marx’s "critique of political economy" became not a purely theoretical matter but rather directly connected to his own revolutionary practice. From this time, Mattick focused on Marx’s theory of capitalist development and its inner logic of contradictions inevitably growing to crisis
as the foundation of all political thoughts within the workers’ movement.
Towards the end of the 1920s, Mattick had moved to Chicago
, where he first tried to unite the different German workers' organisations. In 1931, he tried to revive the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung, a newspaper steeped in tradition and at one time edited by August Spies
and Joseph Dietzgen
, but without success. For a period, he joined the Industrial Workers of the World
(known as the IWW or Wobblies), who were the only revolutionary union organization existing in America that, in spite of national or sectoral differences, assembled all workers in One Big Union, so as to prepare the general strike to bring down capitalism. However, the golden age of the Wobblies' militant strikes had already passed by the beginning of the thirties, and only the emerging unemployed movement again gave the IWW a brief regional development. In 1933, Paul Mattick drafted a programme for the IWW trying to give the Wobblies a more solid ‘Marxist’ foundation based on Grossman’s theory, although it did not improve the organization's condition.
In 1934 Mattick, some friends from the IWW as well as some expellees from the Leninist Proletarian Party formed the United Workers Party
, later to be renamed Group of Council Communists. The group kept close contacts with the remaining small groups of the German/Dutch
Left communism
in Europe and published the journal International Council Correspondence
, which through the 1930s became an Anglo
-American parallel to the Rätekorrespondenz of the Dutch GIC(H). Articles and debates from Europe were translated along with economic analysis and critical political comments of current issues in the US and elsewhere in the world.
Apart from his own factory work, Mattick organized not only most of the review's technical work but was also the author of the greater part of the contributions which appeared in it. Among the few willing to offer regular contributions was Karl Korsch
, with whom Mattick had come into contact in 1935 and who remained a personal friend for many years from the time of his emigration to the United States at the end of 1936.
As European Council Communism went underground and formally "disappeared" in the second half of the thirties, Mattick changed Correspondences name - from 1938 to Living Marxism, and from 1942 to New Essays.
Like Karl Korsch and Henryk Grossman, Mattick had some contact with Max Horkheimer
's Institut fur Sozialforschung
(the later Frankfurt School
). In 1936, Mattick wrote a major sociological study on the American unemployed movement for the Institute, although it remained in the Institute's files, to be published only in 1969 by the SDS publishing house Neue Kritik.
and the post-war Mccarthyism
, the left in America experienced repression. Mattick retired at the beginning of the 1950s to the countryside, where he managed to survive through occasional jobs and his activity as a writer. In the postwar development Mattick took part in only small and occasional political activities, writing small articles for various periodicals from time to time. From the forties and up through the fifties, Mattick went through a study of John Maynard Keynes
and compiled a series of critical notes and articles against Keynesian theory and practice. In this work, he developed Marx’s and Grossman's theory of capitalist development further to meet the new phenomena and appearances of the modern capitalism critically.
With the general changes of the political scene and the re-emergence of more radical thoughts in the sixties, Paul Mattick made some more elaborated and important political contributions. One main work was Marx and Keynes: The Limits of Mixed Economy from 1969, which was translated into several languages and had quite an influence in the post-1968 student movement. Another important work was Critique of Herbert Marcuse
: The one-dimensional man
in class society, in which Mattick forcefully rejected Marcuse's thesis that the proletariat
, as Marx understood it, had become a mythological concept in advanced capitalist society. Although he agreed with Marcuse's critical analysis of the ruling ideology, Mattick demonstrated that the theory of one dimensionality itself existed only as ideology
. Marcuse subsequentially affirmed that Mattick's critique was the only serious one to which his book was subjected.
. Here, he held lectures on Marx’ critique of political economy, on the history of the workers movement and served as critical co-referent at seminars with other guests such as Maximilien Rubel
, Ernest Mandel
, Joan Robinson
and others. In 1977, he completed his last important lecture tour of the University of Mexico City. He spoke in West Germany
only twice: in 1971 at Berlin and in 1975 at Hanover
.
In his last years, Paul Mattick thus succeeded in getting a small audience within the new generations for his views. In 1978, a major collection of articles from over forty years appeared as Anti-Bolshevik Communism.
Paul Mattick died in February 1981 leaving an almost finished manuscript for another book, which was later edited and published by his son, Paul Mattick Jr., as Marxism - Last Refuge of the Bourgeoisie?.
Throughout his life he continually criticised Bolshevism, Lenin and Leninist Marxism and organisational methods, describing their political legacy as:
- "...serving as a mere ideology to justify the rise of modified capitalist (state-capitalist) systems, which were ... controlled by way of an authoritarian state."
Early life
Born of KashubianKashubians
Kashubians/Kaszubians , also called Kashubs, Kashubes, Kaszubians, Kassubians or Cassubians, are a West Slavic ethnic group in Pomerelia, north-central Poland. Their settlement area is referred to as Kashubia ....
parentage in Pomerania
Pomerania
Pomerania is a historical region on the south shore of the Baltic Sea. Divided between Germany and Poland, it stretches roughly from the Recknitz River near Stralsund in the West, via the Oder River delta near Szczecin, to the mouth of the Vistula River near Gdańsk in the East...
in 1904 and raised in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
by class-conscious parents, Mattick at the age of 14 was already a member of the Spartacists
Spartacist League
The Spartacus League was a left-wing Marxist revolutionary movement organized in Germany during World War I. The League was named after Spartacus, leader of the largest slave rebellion of the Roman Republic...
' Freie Sozialistische Jugend. In 1918, he started to study as a toolmaker at Siemens AG
Siemens AG
Siemens AG is a German multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Munich, Germany. It is the largest Europe-based electronics and electrical engineering company....
, where he was also elected as the apprentices' delegate on the workers' council of the company during the German Revolution
German Revolution
The German Revolution was the politically-driven civil conflict in Germany at the end of World War I, which resulted in the replacement of Germany's imperial government with a republic...
.
Implicated in many actions during the revolution, arrested several times and threatened with death, Mattick radicalized along the left and oppositional trend of the German Communists. After the "Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
" split of the Communist Party of Germany
Communist Party of Germany
The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
(KPD; a successor to the Spartacist League) and the formation for the Communist Workers Party of Germany
Communist Workers Party of Germany
The Communist Workers Party of Germany was an anti-parliamentarian and council communist party that was active in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic. It was founded in April 1920 in Heidelberg as a split from the Communist Party of Germany...
(KAPD) in the spring of 1920, he entered the KAPD and worked in the youth organization Rote Jugend, writing for its journal.
In 1921, at the age of 17, Mattick moved to Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
to find work with Klockner
Klöckner
Klöckner & Co. is a German metal handler headquartered in Duisburg. Europe's largest independent distributor of steel, it is a leading supplier to the European and North American markets....
for a while, until strikes
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
, insurrections and a new arrest destroyed every prospect of employment. He was active as an organizer and agitator in the KAPD and the AAU in the Cologne region, where he got to know Jan Appel
Jan Appel
Jan Appel , was a German left communist revolutionary who participated in the German Revolution in the Spartacus League, later on was active in KPD, afterwards KAPD later on Group of Internationalist Communists , Communistenbond Spartacus and finally the International Communist...
among others. Contacts were also established with intellectuals, writers and artists working in the AAUE founded by Otto Rühle
Otto Rühle
Otto Rühle was a German Marxist active in opposition to both the First and Second World Wars, and a founder with along with Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and others of the group and magazine Internationale, which posed a revolutionary internationalism against a world of warring...
.
With the continuing decline of radical mass struggle and revolutionary hopes, especially after 1923, and having been unemployed for a number of years, Mattick emigrated to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1926, whilst still maintaining contacts with the KAPD and the AAUE in Germany.
In the USA
In the USA, Mattick carried through a more systematic theoretical study, above all of Karl MarxKarl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
. In addition, the publication of Henryk Grossman
Henryk Grossman
Henryk Grossmanalternative spelling: Henryk Grossmann , was a Polish-German economist and historian of Jewish descent....
's principal work, Das Akkumulations - and Zusammenbruchsgesetz des Kapitalistischen Systems (1929), played a fundamental role for Mattick, as Grossmann brought Marx's theory of accumulation, which had been completely forgotten, back to the centre of debate in the workers' movement. To Mattick, Marx’s "critique of political economy" became not a purely theoretical matter but rather directly connected to his own revolutionary practice. From this time, Mattick focused on Marx’s theory of capitalist development and its inner logic of contradictions inevitably growing to crisis
Crisis theory
Crisis theory is generally associated with Marxian economics. In this context crisis refers to what is called, even currently and outside Marxian theory in many European countries a "conjuncture" or especially sharp bust cycle of the regular boom and bust pattern of what Marxists term "chaotic"...
as the foundation of all political thoughts within the workers’ movement.
Towards the end of the 1920s, Mattick had moved to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, where he first tried to unite the different German workers' organisations. In 1931, he tried to revive the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung, a newspaper steeped in tradition and at one time edited by August Spies
August Spies
August Vincent Theodore Spies was an anarchist labor activist who was found guilty of conspiracy and hanged following a bomb attack on police at the Haymarket affair.-Background:...
and Joseph Dietzgen
Joseph Dietzgen
Joseph Dietzgen was a German socialist philosopher, Marxist and journalist. Joseph was born in Blankenberg in the Rhine Province of Prussia. He was the first of five children of father Johann Gottfried Anno Dietzgen and mother Anna Margaretha Lückerath . He was, like his father, a tanner by...
, but without success. For a period, he joined the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
(known as the IWW or Wobblies), who were the only revolutionary union organization existing in America that, in spite of national or sectoral differences, assembled all workers in One Big Union, so as to prepare the general strike to bring down capitalism. However, the golden age of the Wobblies' militant strikes had already passed by the beginning of the thirties, and only the emerging unemployed movement again gave the IWW a brief regional development. In 1933, Paul Mattick drafted a programme for the IWW trying to give the Wobblies a more solid ‘Marxist’ foundation based on Grossman’s theory, although it did not improve the organization's condition.
In 1934 Mattick, some friends from the IWW as well as some expellees from the Leninist Proletarian Party formed the United Workers Party
Council communists (US organization)
In 1934 a group of left communists within the IWW joined with a dissident faction of the Proletarian Party to form the United Workers Party. The group soon changed its name to Groups of Council Communists or simply the Council Communists....
, later to be renamed Group of Council Communists. The group kept close contacts with the remaining small groups of the German/Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
Left communism
Left communism
Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks at certain periods, from a position that is asserted to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Leninism held by the Communist International...
in Europe and published the journal International Council Correspondence
International Council Correspondence
The International Council Correspondence was a council communist magazine published in Chicago from 1934 to 1943. In 1938, it changed its name to Living Marxism and again to New Essays in 1942....
, which through the 1930s became an Anglo
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
-American parallel to the Rätekorrespondenz of the Dutch GIC(H). Articles and debates from Europe were translated along with economic analysis and critical political comments of current issues in the US and elsewhere in the world.
Apart from his own factory work, Mattick organized not only most of the review's technical work but was also the author of the greater part of the contributions which appeared in it. Among the few willing to offer regular contributions was Karl Korsch
Karl Korsch
-Biography:Korsch was born in Tostedt, near Hamburg, to Carl August Korsch, a secretary at the cantonal court and his wife Therese. In 1898 the family moved to Meiningen, Thuringia and Korsch senior attained the position of a managing clerk in a bank...
, with whom Mattick had come into contact in 1935 and who remained a personal friend for many years from the time of his emigration to the United States at the end of 1936.
As European Council Communism went underground and formally "disappeared" in the second half of the thirties, Mattick changed Correspondences name - from 1938 to Living Marxism, and from 1942 to New Essays.
Like Karl Korsch and Henryk Grossman, Mattick had some contact with Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer was a German-Jewish philosopher-sociologist, famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the 'Frankfurt School' of social research. His most important works include The Eclipse of Reason and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment...
's Institut fur Sozialforschung
Institute for Social Research
The Institute for Social Research is a research organization for sociology and continental philosophy, best known as the institutional home of the Frankfurt School and critical theory....
(the later Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
). In 1936, Mattick wrote a major sociological study on the American unemployed movement for the Institute, although it remained in the Institute's files, to be published only in 1969 by the SDS publishing house Neue Kritik.
World War II and after
After the United States' entry into World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and the post-war Mccarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
, the left in America experienced repression. Mattick retired at the beginning of the 1950s to the countryside, where he managed to survive through occasional jobs and his activity as a writer. In the postwar development Mattick took part in only small and occasional political activities, writing small articles for various periodicals from time to time. From the forties and up through the fifties, Mattick went through a study of John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
and compiled a series of critical notes and articles against Keynesian theory and practice. In this work, he developed Marx’s and Grossman's theory of capitalist development further to meet the new phenomena and appearances of the modern capitalism critically.
With the general changes of the political scene and the re-emergence of more radical thoughts in the sixties, Paul Mattick made some more elaborated and important political contributions. One main work was Marx and Keynes: The Limits of Mixed Economy from 1969, which was translated into several languages and had quite an influence in the post-1968 student movement. Another important work was Critique of Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
: The one-dimensional man
One-Dimensional Man
One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society is a book written by philosopher Herbert Marcuse, first published in 1964....
in class society, in which Mattick forcefully rejected Marcuse's thesis that the proletariat
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
, as Marx understood it, had become a mythological concept in advanced capitalist society. Although he agreed with Marcuse's critical analysis of the ruling ideology, Mattick demonstrated that the theory of one dimensionality itself existed only as ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
. Marcuse subsequentially affirmed that Mattick's critique was the only serious one to which his book was subjected.
Later life
Up through the seventies, many old and new articles by Mattick were published in different languages for various publications. In the academic year 1974-75, Mattick was engaged as visiting professor at the "Red" University-Center of Roskilde in DenmarkDenmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
. Here, he held lectures on Marx’ critique of political economy, on the history of the workers movement and served as critical co-referent at seminars with other guests such as Maximilien Rubel
Maximilien Rubel
Maximilien Rubel was a famous Marxist historian. He was educated in law and philosophy in Vienna and Chernivtsi before moving to France to take German studies at the Sorbonne, from which he received his Licence-dès-lettres in 1934...
, Ernest Mandel
Ernest Mandel
Ernest Ezra Mandel, also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter , was a revolutionary Marxist theorist.-Life:...
, Joan Robinson
Joan Robinson
Joan Violet Robinson FBA was a post-Keynesian economist who was well known for her knowledge of monetary economics and wide-ranging contributions to economic theory...
and others. In 1977, he completed his last important lecture tour of the University of Mexico City. He spoke in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
only twice: in 1971 at Berlin and in 1975 at Hanover
Hanover
Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...
.
In his last years, Paul Mattick thus succeeded in getting a small audience within the new generations for his views. In 1978, a major collection of articles from over forty years appeared as Anti-Bolshevik Communism.
Paul Mattick died in February 1981 leaving an almost finished manuscript for another book, which was later edited and published by his son, Paul Mattick Jr., as Marxism - Last Refuge of the Bourgeoisie?.
External links
- Paul Mattick archive at libcom.org
- Kurasje - The Council Communist Archive - The original source of this text
- Paul Mattick Internet Archive
- The Paul Mattick Homepage
- German Paul Mattick Archive in MIA
- International Council Correspondence, contents 1934-43
Key works
- The Masses and the Vanguard
- Council Communism
- Intro. to Anti-Bolshevik Communism
- International Luxemburgist Network
- Krisen und Krisentheorien 1974
- Economic Crisis and Crisis Theory 1981 Merlin Press, London. trans Paul Mattick Jr.
- “Anti-Bolshevist Communism in Germany”. Telos 26 (Winter 1975-76). New York: Telos Press.