Franz Jakubowski

Franz Jakubowski (1912 - 1970) was a Marxist theorist. Born in Poland, he grew up in what was then the 'free city' of Danzig. His father was a doctor. From 1930 to 1933 he studied law in Heidelberg, Berlin, Munich and Breslau, before completing his studies in political science at Basle University. After student activism and the agitational role he would briefly play in Danzig, Jakubowski abandoned Europe, and settled in the USA, changing his name to Frank Fisher. There he would play a part in establishing the Alexander Herzen Foundation, a publisher of samizdat soviet literature.

Political & intellectual development

In 1933 he became a member of the Socialist Worker's Party, a dissenting German Marxist group identifying with Leon Trotsky. At Basle he met and worked with Professor Fritz Belleville, a leading figure in German Trotskyist organisations, a member of the Frankfurt School and an associate of Karl Korsch. In 1936 Franz returned to Danzig, where he soon became spokesman for the city's Trotskyist group, the Spartacus League, active in efforts such as mobilising dock workers against arms shipments to Francisco Franco. Around 60 of the group were arrested by the Nazi authorities in December, 1936, when ten leading members were sentenced to three years' imprisonment, including Jakubowski. Trotsky wrote about the trial in journals such as "Lutte Ouvriere", partly in order to comment on the show trials then in full train under Stalinism. Jakubowski's role, and refusal to recant, led Trotsky to make stark contrasts with the more brutal Stalinist model of justice. Franz's parents secured his release on the basis that he was a German citizen, and he escaped via Denmark and Cuba to the USA.

Contribution to theory

Jakubowski published his only major work, a book based on his doctoral thesis, in Danzig, 1936. It is entitled "Ideology and Superstructure in Historical Materialism", ISBN 0-85031-154-3 and may be seen as an extension to the seminal work of Karl Korsch on the centrality of the Hegelian dialectic to Marxian thought. Jakubowski rehearses for the reader the steps Marx and Engels took away from Hegel, via Feuerbach, to their 'historical materialist' position. Its unique contribution to Marxian thought is the clarity of its exposition of the relationship between subject and object in Marxian theory.

: "In order to combat a widespread misunderstanding, it must be stressed that the superstructure is real. Lenin in particular tended to overlook this, when he contrasted being and idea in his 'reflection theory'. The superstructure is no less real than its base. The terms 'reflection' and 'to reflect', which Engels was fond of using when he was discussing ideological superstructure, can be misleading; these terms are meant to indicate something about the "relationship" between base and superstructure, not to "describe" the superstructure itself. There are in fact two forms of reality: the material reality and the 'ideal' reality (ie, the reality of human ideas). Political and legal superstructure are as real as the base. Both are social relations consisting of human relationships. Both exist in the idea, both are also material realities. As Marx said in "The Holy Family", 'The communist workers know full well that property, capital, money, wage labour etc. are in no way the mere creations of their imagination but are the extremely concrete and practical results of their own self-alienation', and the same is true of non-economic relationships. The reality of social ideas, then, forms a necessary and constituent part of the material reality of social relationships. "Material relations are what they are only in conjunction with the ideas which correspond to them". The reality of both is expressed by their social efficacy."

"Ideology and Superstructure" also offered a critique of competing interpretations of Marxian thought, particularly that associated with Karl Kautsky and that with Max Adler.

Influence

History has not been kind to Jakubowski. His one contribution is still read in certain small Marxist political currents, and occasionally touches the fringes of academic study, for example, a brief review in the journal "Radical Philosophy" by British philosopher Kate Soper.