6 - The Cunning of Production and the Proletarian Revolution in the Communist Manifesto

Summary

The concept of cunning, either in the form of ‘cunning of nature’ (Kant) or in the form of ‘cunning of reason’ (Hegel), was the cornerstone upon which the most eminent representatives of the classical German philosophy grounded their own philosophical interpretations of history. According to the argument, which we are going to present and discuss in this chapter, however, Marx and Engels's philosophy of history - as included in the Communist Manifesto - is also inconceivable without a concept of cunning. In this case we may talk about a ‘cunning of production’, the historical relation of which with the proletarian revolution proved to be much more complicated than Marx and Engels's theoretical analysis of this issue.

FROM THE ‘CUNNING OF REASON’ TO THE ‘CUNNING OF PRODUCTION’

According to Hegel, states, nations and individuals, whilst animated by their particular interests, ‘they are all the time the unconscious tools and organs of the world mind at work within them’. In other words, it is the ‘cunning of reason’ that sets the particular passions and ends in the service of the universal. From this point of view, ‘all these expressions of individual and national life, in seeking and fulfilling their own ends, are at the same time the means and instruments of a higher purpose and wider enterprise, of which they are themselves ignorant and which they nevertheless unconsciously carry out’.

Some decades later, Friedrich Engels, in his critique of Hegel's philosophy of history, presented and defended his own version of cunning. According to Engels, the fact that in the realm of history nothing takes place without intention cannot contradict the conclusion that the course of history is governed by innate general laws.

From Engels's point of view,

what is desired happens but rarely […] Thus the conflicts of innumerable individual wills and individual action in the domain of history lead to a state of affairs quite similar to that prevailing in the realm of unconscious nature. The ends of the actions are desired, but the results which actually follow from these actions are not desired; or when they do seem to correspond to the desired end, they ultimately have consequences quite other than those desired.