The same is true of the position proffered by socialist theory on the problems of culture. By socialist theory I do not mean here a theory that renders specific value-judgments (on capitalism, private property, the proletariat), or postulates a specific politics, let alone an entire social order; what I mean is simply a theory that does not readily accept the packaged and supposedly self-evident value-judgments of liberalism, that is, of the prevailing socio-philosophical view; instead, it places itself outside and above the contradiction in which that view remains naively mired.
The theory takes a stance toward things and their development that is critical, meaning it is primarily cognitive, examining, observant, and theoretical.
Therein lies the lasting importance of the "Critique of the political economy" – for political economy in its classic form, which is also retained in the historical-ethical modifications, believed that it was describing and creating the normal social state of affairs: on the basis of the personal freedom and equality of individuals, on the basis of acquired rights, that is, the unlimited inequality of wealth, and on the basis of the division of society into the class of the owners and the class of the proletariat.
In the face of this precondition, the following realizations are of fundamental importance: 1.) The great overall mass of culture to date existed and flourished without these supposedly normal conditions, as it did without the railroad, telegraphs, and spinning machine; that, instead, some kind of common ownership by the people, at least of land, and, moreover, the private ownership by the industrial workers of their means of production were certainly the rule historically, and still are in a great many places; 2.) That "contemporary society, too, is not a fixed crystal but an organism that is capable of change and is in a constant process of transformation." (K. Marx, Das Capital. Vorrede zur ersten Auflage, 25 July 1867).
In addition, however, a necessary element of “scientific socialism” is the recognition that the driving forces behind social movements are not primarily political conditions, and even less so intellectual currents (scientific, artistic, and ethical currents), no matter how much they may contribute, but the crude material needs, feelings, and emotions of economic “daily” life, which take on different forms depending on the social living conditions, that is to say, within the various strata or classes; and that this relatively independent variable has a determinative influence on political conditions and intellectual currents, according to whose repercussions it is itself constantly furthered, but also impeded, and thus always modified in significant ways.
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