Problems of psychology in the works of Karl Marx

Abstract

Psychology is not among the disciplines which ? like political economy ? were systematically developed by Karl Marx. There are no psy chological treatises among the collected works of Marx. But in a number of his works, one finds a series of remarks on various questions of psychology. Although not externally systematized, these remarks evidence, nevertheless, an internal unity. As one develops their content, these fragments begin to form a single, monolithic whole that permeates the entire worldview of Marx. Therefore, in the field of psychology, Marx must not be treated as a great representative of the past, to be studied merely historically or philologically. We must approach him as we would approach the most contemporary of our contemporaries, to confront his thought with the most modern problems. It is on these that psychology must concentrate; for Marx supplies us with the most crucial of psychological insights which, elaborated in the light of Marxist-Leninist methodology, serve us as guide in the construction of psychology. It is well known that contemporary psychology abroad is in crisis. This crisis that coincided with a rapid growth in experimental research is ? like the crisis in physics that Lenin described in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism ? a methodological crisis. It reflects the general ideological conflict that is going on in contemporary science and that manifests itself in a fundamental methodological crisis in a number of disciplines, beginning with contemporary mathematics. In psychology this crisis has led to the formation of schools that are fighting one another. It has become so bad that the leading figures in psychology have been unable to ignore it. A number of leading psychologists have written about the critical nature of this period for psychology and this question has repeatedly come up at psychological congresses. At the Twelfth Congress of German Psychologists in Hamburg in 1931, K. B?hler referred in his opening statement to the serious need1, for rethinking of the bases of psychology. In his own book on the "crisis