Voluntaristic Socialism: An Examination of the Implications of Hendrik de Man's Ideology

Abstract

With the publication in 1926 ofZur Psychologie des Sozialismusthe hitherto obscure Belgian radical Hendrik de Man became a figure of international import in socialist circles. The work, aptly retitled in some later editions as Beyond Marxism, was a categorical and comprehensive challenge to the ideological monopoly that Marxism had long maintained on the dominant forms of the Continental labor and socialist movements. The appearance of the book in German, the author explained, was particularly appropriate in view of the role of that language in the historical development of Marxist theory, as well as because of the critical importance of Germany to the socialist movement. The treatise rapidly received broader circulation by translation into some ten European languages, and enjoyed 14 editions; it provoked the comment of just about every socialist theoretician on the Continent, excited the attention of academics, and made its author the center of violent controversy. If the declarations of Bernard Lavergne and Hermann Keyserling that it was the most important work in socialist theory sinceDas Kapitalcould be dismissed as extravagant and interested, Theodor Heuss' more modest judgment that this was “the weightiest analysis of the Marxist thinker [i.e., Marx] and his effects that up to now has been attempted from the explicitly socialist side” carried telling conviction. The stature of the author was soon confirmed by the awesomely authoritativeArchiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitikthrough the appearance in its pages of de Man's reviews of the newest publications concerned with the problems of the worker in industrial society, and there was even an abortive attempt made on the part of fellow-thinkers to launch a periodical with de Man as editor-in-chief.