prefer, against MarxthroughNeo-Stalinist Marxism.”^33 The essay con-
sists of two parts: “The Revolutionary Myth” and “The Philosophy of
Revolution”.
“The Revolutionary Myth”This section could have been titled “Why I am not a Communist,” for it
lodges a metaphysical critique of dialectical materialism.^34 “I now realize
that materialism is a metaphysics hiding positivism” (MR 201 ). And it
inconsistently eliminates human subjectivity, reducing it to an object of
scientific investigation while making the scientist “an objective
beholder” that claims to contemplate nature as it is, absolutely.
We have observed Sartre pursue the ontological line inBNwhile
resisting the positivist stand that dismisses metaphysics as meaningless.
In the present essay he takes the metaphysical tack. Addressing now the
materialist “metaphysics” of the Marxists, he concludes:
It is a clear and a priori stand on a problem which infinitely transcends our experi-
ence. [In other words, it is “metaphysical” in a common use of that term.] This is
also my own stand, but I did not consider myself to be any less a metaphysician in
refusing existence to God then Leibniz was in granting it to Him. And by what
(^33) “Materialism and Revolution,” in Jean-Paul Sartre,Literary and Philosophical Essays,
trans. Annette Michelson (New York: Crowell-Collier, Collier Books, 1962 ), 198 n. 1 ;
hereafter MR.
(^34) In Eastern Europe it was common to distinguish Dialectical Materialism (DIAMAT, as it
was known) from Historical Materialism. In 1938 , Stalin wrote a work entitledDialectical
Materialism and Historical Materialismthat settled the matter for some. The former com-
prises roughly the Marxist metaphysics and philosophy of science, including the “laws” of
dialectical progress in nature, adapted by Engels from Hegel’s philosophy of nature (Sartre
dismissively refers to Marx’s “unfortunate meeting with Engels” [MR 248 n.]). Historical
materialism is the “materialist” philosophy of history that embraces a form of economic
determinism “in the long run” and the distinction between forces and relations of produc-
tion as well as the ideological superstructure carried along by those changes in the base.
Obviously this rather simple account is refined over the years, such that a kind of “techno-
logical” determinism enters the scene and the relation between base and superstructure is
considered to be reciprocal in character. From his earliest work,Transcendence of the Ego,
Sartre rejected a dialectic of nature, but he continued to favor a “materialist” (in scare
quotes) theory of history, so long as it was not determinist and left room for individual action
in history. He believes that those conditions will be met when he hits upon a “dialectical
nominalism” in theCritique. In “Materialism and Revolution” one senses his discomfort
with a “materialism” that claims to be “dialectical” and “revolutionary.” He had yet to
reconcile these concepts.
“Materialism and Revolution” 249