Left theoretical history: Wolfgang Fritz Haug: “‘The argument’ is on offer”

»“The Argument” was founded in 1959 at the Free University of Berlin. They were co-founders and were only 23 years old themselves. How come?

It wasn’t actually founded. It was created. The occasion was the “Fight against Nuclear Death” movement, founded by trade unions, the SPD and artists, intellectuals, church representatives and others. Later I became active on the Easter march. One day my teacher at the philosophy department at the FU, Margherita von Brentano, took me aside and said: “Wolf, come with me.” She took me to a meeting of the student group against nuclear armament. Ulrike Meinhof made it known that she could no longer continue with the “Argumente” series of leaflets that she had published on behalf of the group. When asked if anyone could take on the task, no one answered. After a moment of brooding silence, my index finger went up.

At your first meeting?

Yes, and that meant I had a duty. The aim was to publish suppressed news about the fallout from nuclear weapons tests. A small group was formed for this purpose. The first such leaflet was distributed in front of the FU cafeteria on May 2, 1959. This and subsequent sheets contained contributions from Günther Anders, who had made the fight against nuclear weapons his main philosophical topic. “The Argument” 15, from March 1960, was the first issue in magazine format. It was directed against the torture practice of the French army against the anti-colonial uprising in Algeria. The introduction was written by the famous theologian Helmut Gollwitzer, who accompanied the magazine until his death. A lot of what I have to sacrifice for the required staccato has immigrated. Reinhard Stretcher’s exhibition “Unpunished Nazi Justice” was established in West Berlin. After worldwide Nazi smearing, we found ourselves organizing a congress to overcome anti-Semitism. And now there was no stopping. We formed an advisory board and a magazine was born. She received her motto from Margherita von Brentano, who also set up a group of younger teachers at the university. These included the later famous philosophers Michael Theunissen and Klaus Heinrich, the latter also a religious scientist. Then she brought me in.

So much for the question of founding. Something emerged that was obviously about time. It was a kind of accidental becoming that educated me. My takeaway was this index finger that was raised and that represents a certain presence. This is necessary so that you can recognize what is possible.

»“The Argument” achieved a peak circulation of almost 25,000 copies. What problems did the magazine address that allowed this to happen?

“The Argument” became a theory magazine. In the meantime we had founded the Argument Club, which Rudi Dutschke also belonged to for a time. We had the issues that now became the issues of the student movement. I don’t think one was missing. There was a resurgence – not just a rise – of the magazine. We grew in capacity. It was the magazine’s merit that it led discussions on fascism and worked through fascism theories. We are still working on it to this day. An important question that we raised was the question of the connection between “sexuality and domination”. This combination of words and a question term had enormous effects, especially in the development of the student movement in the 1960s. The protest from women gave the formula a concrete face. The women might be allowed to make coffee or take out leaflets, but the men dominated the process. So there were uprisings, not only within the student movement, but also in trade unions and left-wing parties in various countries. This is what Frigga Haug said in the “Argument”. Elements of a new socialist women’s movement emerged with the “Pelagea” as its own magazine. Frigga founded an autonomous women’s editorial team in the “Argument”. Almost half a century later, in Berlin in 2015, Frigga and others founded a Marxist-feminist international.

What happened in the early days?

Another highlight of the work of the “Argument” circle in alliance with trade unionists and critical intellectuals was the founding of the Berlin People’s University in 1980, divided into seven autonomous departments. The downfall is also interesting. We learned from this and founded the Berlin Institute for Critical Theory in 1996. At that time, the seventh volume of the critical complete edition of Antonio Gramsci’s “Prison Notebooks” had already been published in German. Their scientific possibility arose from the “fall of the wall”. Without the Leipzig Romanist Klaus Bochmann we would not have dared to take on this project. The same historical context gave rise to another project, the “Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism” (HKWM), again from the sphere of “Argument”. Its history dates back to the 100th year of Marx’s death, 1983, just as I was spending a research semester with Georges Labica at the University of Paris VIII in Vincennes. From there I returned with a contract to publish his “Dictionnaire critique du marxisme” with Argument-Verlag. With the fall of the GDR it became clear that an unparalleled “break in history” (Glotz) had occurred. We responded to this by reorganizing the project of supplementary volumes to the “Critical Dictionary of Marxism” to the HKWM.

I always associate “The Argument” with Gramsci and his philosophy of practice, or more precisely, Labriola and Gramsci’s “philosophy of practice.” What significance do these two thinkers have for the magazine and for Marxism?

If you imagine what it means to make a critical edition of Gramsci’s “Prison Notebooks,” then you realize: It’s a lot of work, ten years of work, but wonderful work. There was also a very interesting question that I asked myself and answered in writing about the “Theses on Feuerbach”. The Italians Labriola and his posthumous student Gramsci sparked the historical materialist philosophy of practice. First with Labriola, the last orthodox Marxian, as Karl Korsch said, and a generation later with Gramsci. But that doesn’t mean that Marx is put in the second row. The crucial question for us today is: Are the Feuerbach theses and the philosophy of practice compatible with Marx’s criticism of political economy? Can you actually read them from the Feuerbach theses? Yes, you can, you even have to. I dedicated the final volume of my “Capital” trilogy to this justification: “That Reading “Capital” – But how?” If you cut off the connection to social practice, you don’t understand anything. Because then an economism emerges that turns the criticism of political economy fatalistic and multiplies the development of the ability of historical actors to act by zero.

In its current form, “The Argument” is on the verge of extinction. What is the situation and what does the future look like?

Very often you find the same people in different projects and in key roles. Experiences that we have had together, a solidarity that can survive differences, these things are indispensable. But this is exactly what results in an unsustainable overload in the long term. It became clear to us that we had to choose between the HKWM and the “argument”. And the HKWM seemed more important to us because its impact has expanded from the margins of history into the global. You can’t reveal that. Now the price question is who else can continue to run the magazine. Can we find people from the next generation who are already sufficiently qualified and also have the courage to take on such a project? Then they can do it. There is actually hope now. We will definitely continue the review section of the magazine. When I recently finally found the time to read the review section in one go in issue 342, “Decolonial Thought and Marxist Theory,” which was currently last published, my heart bled at the thought that this excellent piece of theoretical culture would disappear. A spark of hope is there, it still glows. There are qualified interested parties from the next generation, and even the generation after that. So much for the “argument” story. It’s still open. “The Argument” is on offer.