| This study reassesses the Marxist Nietzschekritik of Paul Ernst and Franz Mehring in its historical, Party-political, and theoretical contexts. Since Ernst's Marxist period (1886-1896) has never been scrutinized properly, Ernst's status as the founder of the Marxist critique of Nietzsche has been forgotten or suppressed. Consequently, Marxists and non-Marxists have exaggerated the quality and import of Mehring's Nietzsche criticism. In the Freie Buhne in 1890, Ernst established the critical practice and much of the critical agenda for Mehring and for all later Marxist Nietzsche critics, including Plekhanov, Gunther, and Lukacs. But these facts have been ignored in most recent scholarship on naturalism and socialism, on the Marxism of the 1890's, and on Nietzsche's early receptions. This study challenges major scholarly misconceptions in these areas as well.; Chapter I sketches Paul Ernst as Party Literat, and confronts the specious legend of Nietzsche's deleterious impact (Lukacs, Hamann/Hermand et al.) or liberating influence (Hinton Thomas, Vivarelli, Aschheim) on the Jungen movement and on Ernst, who took part in it. Chapters II and III establish the theoretical context by historicizing the contemporary "state of the science." Chapter II takes on Lukac's retroactive discreditation of Engels and of the so-called "vulgar" Marxism of the Second International. Crucial here are new readings of Engels's late letters on historical materialism and of Lukac's misrepresentations thereof. Chapter III recovers the historical theory available to Ernst and Mehring by reassessing Engels as the main transmitter of Marxism to the younger generation, by refuting T. Carver's recent attacks on Engels, and by rediscovering the prototypical Ideologiekritik developed by Engels and Kautsky in the late 1880's.; Against these backgrounds, Ernst and Mehring can be read historically, in terms that fit the 1890's. Chapter IV traces Ernst's pioneering struggles to adapt to Nietzsche the available Marxist models for the critique of bourgeois philosophy, and analyzes Ernst's work within a complete survey of Nietzsche's presence in the Freie Buhne, 1890-1894. Against E. Behler's recent attempts to rehabilitate Mehring, Chapter V argues that Mehring's Nietzschekritik was a derivative, plagiarizing, self-defensive polemic against the naturalists, his favorite enemies. |
