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History
(a review of important events,
influences and activities in the lives of Marx and Engels)
Theory
(dealing with the salient points of
their literary output, separately and in combination)
Philosophy (the
general or world views of Marx
and Engels)
Capitalism
(their
critical analysis of the
profit system, mainly from
an economic standpoint)
Politics
(how they saw
the revolutionary change
from capitalism to
socialism/communism taking place)
Socialism
(their
conception of the major
features of the new society)
Evaluation (chiefly
of
points of
similarity and difference between the views of Marx/Engels and those of
socialists today)
(4) Literature (details
of
sources quoted
and a guide to relevant reading). |
|
World
Socialist Movement - Socialist Writers: Marx and Socialism: A Critical
Evaluation
The main aim of this article is to present an
appreciative and critical account of the contribution of Marx and
Engels to the socialist movement. It will not deal with the `Marxism'
that has been developed by various writers, leaders, parties and
movements that have used, extended, and in some cases distorted, the
writings of Marx and Engels for their own purposes. The outline is
divided into four parts:
(1) History
(a review of important events,
influences and activities in the lives of Marx and Engels)
(2) Theory
(dealing with the salient points of
their literary output, separately and in combination)
(3) Evaluation (chiefly
of
points of
similarity and difference between the views of Marx/Engels and those of
socialists today)
(4) Literature (details
of
sources quoted
and a guide to relevant reading).
History
Karl Marx has been variously
described as an economist, philosopher, historian, sociologist and
revolutionary. He was born in 1818 in Prussia. His parents were Jewish,
his father a successful lawyer. At the age of eighteen, Marx went to
the University of Berlin to study law and philosophy. He was introduced
to Hegel's philosophy and became involved in the activities of the
Young Hegelians, who were generally atheistic and talked vaguely of
political action. But he did not accept Hegel's views uncritically.
Hegel was an idealist who believed that matter or existence was
inferior to and dependent on mind or spirit. Marx was much influenced
by Feuerbach, a critic of Hegel, who put forward a materialist view
that spirit was a projection of `the real man standing on the
foundation of nature'. From then on Marx sought to combine Hegel's
dialectic - the idea that all things are in a continual process of
change - with Feuerbach's materialism, which placed material conditions
above ideas.
In 1842 Marx became editor of the Rheinische Zeitung newspaper,
and succeeded in trebling its circulation. The Prussian authorities
suspended it for being too outspoken. In 1843 he married Jenny,
daughter of a Prussian family 'of military and administrative
distinction', and the couple moved to Paris. Marx co-edited a new
review (yearbook) and began to associate with communist societies of
French and German workers
He also met Friedrich Engels, who was to become his lifelong
collaborator. In the yearbook he first raised the call for an 'uprising
of the proletariat' to realise the conceptions of his philosophy.
Consequently he was expelled from France and in 1845 he left for
Brussels, followed by Engels.
Marx and Engels combined to write The Holy Family, a criticism of
Hegelian idealism, published in 1845. But their next joint work, The
German Ideology,
expounding their materialist conception of history, did not find a
publisher until 1932. An unusual sequence of events led them to write
their pamphlet The Communist Manifesto in 1848.
A society of mainly German handicraftsmen met in London and decided to
formulate a political program. They asked Marx and Engels to join them,
changed the name of the society to the Communist League, and entrusted
Marx with the task of writing the manifesto. It was a pithy summary of
the materialist conception of history (see below), asserting that the
forthcoming victory of the proletariat would put an end to class
society.
The idea of small experiments in community living, 'social utopias,'
was rejected. It also set forth ten immediate measures as first steps
towards communism, ranging from a progressive income tax to free
education for all children (Higgins, 1998: 4).
A 'revolutionary movement' - perhaps better described as a period of
industrial and political unrest - erupted in 1848 across all of Western
Europe (details in McLellan, 1973: 189ff). The King of France was
exiled and a provisional republican government formed. Marx was invited
to Paris just in time to avoid expulsion by the Belgian government. He
was indicted on several charges, including advocating non-payment of
taxes. He was acquitted but banished as an alien in 1849.
Marx went to London, which was to be his home for the rest of his life.
He rejoined the Communist League there. In 1850 he wrote, with Engels,
an address to the central committee of the League, in which they
advocated that in future revolutionary situations the revolution should
be made 'permanent' by setting up revolutionary workers' governments
alongside any new bourgeois one. When the hope of revolution faded,
Marx came into conflict with those who advocated 'direct revolutionary
ventures' rather than urging workers 'to change yourselves and become
qualified for political power'. From 1850 to 1864 Marx lived in poverty
with his wife and four children. Engels contributed to Marx's financial
support but with only small sums until in 1864 he became a partner in
his father's firm. In 1859 Marx published A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy. Then he started work on his magnum opus,
Capital. His political isolation ended in 1864 with the founding of the
International Working Men's Association. Although he was neither its
founder nor its head, he soon became its leading spirit.
During the next five years Marx was active as a member of the
International's General Council. The membership of the International in
1869 was estimated at 800,000. But it was the Paris Commune of 1871
that made Marx into an international figure. When an insurrection broke
out in Paris and the Commune was proclaimed, Marx gave it his
unswerving support. After the Commune was crushed in 1871, Marx's name
became synonymous throughout Europe with the revolutionary spirit
symbolised by the Paris Commune. But the advent of the insurrection
exacerbated the antagonisms within the International.
The Reform Bill of 1867 enfranchised the British working class and
opened opportunities for political action by the trade unions. Union
leaders found they could make practical advances by co-operating with
the Liberal Party, and they generally regarded Marx's theoretical
justifications as an encumbrance in pursuit of their reformist aims.
Furthermore, Marx was fighting on another front, that of the anarchists
and Bakunin in particular. Bakunin felt that Marx was a German
authoritarian and an arrogant Jew who wanted to transform the
International into a personal dictatorship over the workers. Marx
thought that the proletariat should form its own political party and
fight against the prevailing parties on the political field.To Bakunin
and his supporters the Paris Commune was a model of revolutionary
direct action and a refutation of what they considered to be Marx's
'authoritarian communism'. After heated debate at the International
Congress in 1872 the Bakuninists were expelled, but the International
languished and was finally disbanded in 1876.
During the rest of his life Marx was in poor health and his creative
energies declined. In 1875 he wrote a caustic criticism of the program
of the German Social Democratic Party (The Gotha Programme),
claiming that it made too many compromises with the status quo. Despite
his withdrawal from active politics, he still retained influence on
working class and socialist movements. Following the death of his wife
in 1881 and of his eldest daughter early in 1883, Marx died in London,
evidently of a lung abcess, in March 1883. Friedrich Engels was born in
1820, the son of a wealthy cotton firm owner. In 1842 he took over the
management of the Manchester factory belonging to his father's firm. He
observed carefully and critically the lives of the workers in
Manchester, which led to the publication in 1845 of his The Condition
of the Working Class in England.
Engels contributed to Marx's Capital by giving him much technical and
economic data and by criticising the successive drafts. The
collaboration lasted until Marx's death and carried on posthumously
with the publication of Volumes II and III of Capital and manuscripts
left by Marx, which Engels edited. He died in 1895.
Although Marx and Engels collaborated on a number of different literary
projects, there were notable differences between them. They were
dissimilar in background, temperament and outlook. There was an
unofficial and loose division of labour between them: Marx devoted
himself to political economy, while Engels concentrated on history and
the natural sciences. These and other differences between the two men
are spelled out by McLellan (1977: 65f) and an account of Marx's
chaotic and unhealthy life style is in Buchan (1997: 192-204).
Theory
The term 'theory' shall be used here broadly to include ideas,
thoughts, values, hypotheses, propositions - even predictions if they
are part of a system of thought. It will be convenient to divide the
discussion into four separate but related parts:
Philosophy (the
general or world views of Marx
and Engels)
Capitalism
(their
critical analysis of the
profit system, mainly from
an economic standpoint)
Politics
(how they saw
the revolutionary change
from capitalism to
socialism/communism taking place)
Socialism
(their
conception of the major
features of the new society)
To seek an understanding of Marxist theory is at first sight a
formidable task. The sheer size of the project - the total writings of
Marx and Engels have been estimated at between 6 and 7 million words -
is daunting. When compounded by the fact that much of their expression
is far from simple, and translations from the original German not
always the best, the project is not an easy one.
Yet it may reasonably be claimed that 'Marxism is not inherently
difficult to understand, in either its philosophic or economic aspects'
(Sowell, 1985: 13). We need to sort out the wood from the trees, and to
recognise that some of the trees are dead stumps left over from past
polemics whose relevance to the world today has long gone.
( 1 ) The
central concepts
of Marxist
philosophy
may be seen as scientific socialism, dialectics, materialism (divided
into dialectical and historical materialism), and the blending of
structure and action. There are other ways of analysing the components
of Marxist philosophy, but that is the approach proposed here.
Marx acknowledges the contribution to his own scientific socialism of
the philosophy of Hegel, the economics of Ricardo and the utopian
socialism of Fourier, St Simon, Owen and others. He saw utopian
socialism as idealistic, not in the popular sense of unselfish thought
and action in the service of a better society, but in the sense of an
ideal society projected into the future and unconnected with existing
social trends.
Marx's scientific method was to proceed by simplifying concrete and
complex manifestations into an abstraction, which becomes less and less
complex until we get at the simplest conception.Then, by systematically
adding complicating factors, we start on our return journey towards
empirical reality 'as a rich aggregate of many conceptions and
realities' (Marx, 1970: 292-3). In short, Marx was a believer in
abstraction, systematic analysis, and successive approximations to a
reality too complex to grasp directly (Sowell, 1985: 18).
Concerning dialectical materialism, Venable (1945:4) has a useful
summary of Marx and Engels on the question of relating it to other
forms of materialism:
dialectical materialism, their naturalistic philosophy of change and
interaction
historical materialism, their theory of social and cultural
transformation and of the interactive, emergent, and progressive
character of history's movement
economic materialism, an elaborate subdivision of, or rather basis for,
their social theory.
The dialectical component of dialectical materialism concerns
recognising the inadequacy of all polar opposites and employing the
dialectical method to overcome that inadequacy. A well-known
formulation is the confrontation of an initial thesis by an antithesis,
resulting in a new synthesis which preserves what is of value in both.
Thus capitalism consists of the thesis of social production confronted
by the antithesis of individual appropriation and private property, to
be overcome by the socialist synthesis of wealth produced socially,
distributed according to need, and held in common.
Marx's theory of historical materialism (the materialist conception of
history) is based on the simple proposition that production is 'the
first premise of all human existence... men must be in a position to
live in order to be able to "make history"' (quoted in Thomas, 1998).
The theory attempts to explain the transformations of whole societies
from one era to another. It sees the source of these changes in
changing technologies ('productive relations') which bring changes in
the way people are organised ('social relations')(Sowell, 1985: 70).
Engels expands on this: 'The materialist conception of history starts
from the principle that production, and with production the exchange of
its products, is the basis of every social order; that in every society
which has appeared in history the distribution of the products, and
with it the division of society into classes or estates, is determined
by what is produced and how it is produced, and how the product is
exchanged' (1936: 294).
Marxian theory implies a blending of structure and action. According to
Applebaum ( 1988: 15) we need 'to understand how Marx sought to bridge
the concerns of both philosophy and science in developing a theory that
operates simultaneously at the levels of structure and action... the
philosophic critique of consciousness, the "scientific" analysis of
capitalist economic institutions, and the historical study of politics
and society.' Furthermore, the Marxian priority is with action rather
than philosophy or the study of structures. One of their most famous
aphorisms is that the point is not to study society but to change it.
(2) The
second area of
Marxist theory is
their analysis of capitalism.
To examine this thoroughly would be a very complex undertaking indeed.
Here I shall attempt only to outline three of what are arguably the
main concepts of Marxian economics: the labour theory of value, the
commodity nature of production, and classes and class struggle. Further
Marxian concepts of perhaps less central importance are the thesis of
increasing misery, the significance of alienation, and the fetishism of
commodities. All of the above except the last two are discussed in more
detail in the Socialist Party pamphlet ( 1978).
Marx's labour theory of value, together with his ideas about the
commodity nature of capitalist production, seek to explain how the
profit system works and how the working class is exploited under that
system. First some (simplified) definitions:
Wealth
is anything useful produced by human labour from materials found in
nature. In capitalism wealth takes the form of an immense accumulation
of commodities. A commodity is an article of wealth produced for the
purpose of being exchanged for other articles of wealth. The means of
production (land, factories, railways, etc) become capital when used to
exploit labour (human energy) to produce surplus value (profit).
Money is capital in its pure form. The capitalist invests capital and
buys labour power (workers selling their energies) to produce
commodities to be sold at a profit.
Price is the monetary expression of value.
Some things that are bought and sold are either not products of labour
or sell at prices disproportionate to the amount of labour embodied in
them, for example land and objects of art. But these exceptions do not
invalidate the labour theory of value as of general applicability. The
Marxian theory of class and class struggle
is a vital part of the explanation of capitalist production. A class is
made up of people who are in the same position in relation to the
ownership and control of the means of wealth production. For Marx and
Engels the class struggle between the bourgeoisie (capitalist class)
and the proletariat (working class) is the great lever of modern social
change. Originally Marx identified three classes on the basis of source
of income: wage for labour, profit for the capitalist and rent for the
landowner (Knox, 1988: 160). But capitalism has now succeeded in
absorbing the landlord class, leaving society polarised between two
classes: capitalists and workers.
The Marxian theory of class is opposed by those academics who explain
class not in terms of ownership or nonownership of the means of wealth
production, but in terms of prestige and style of life. Society is said
to consist of a hierarchy of non-conflicting classes, with names such
as upper, middle, working and under. Such a theory tends to gloss over
the fact that only about 2 percent of the population own enough capital
to live comfortably on the income it provides; the other 98 percent
have to find an employer or live off state benefit.
Brief mention should be made of a few other Marxian ideas relating to
the analysis of capitalism. Marx is sometimes associated with the
belief that as capitalism continues it will lead to the increasing
misery of the working class.
His use of the term 'misery' should be taken as relative to that of the
capitalist class, not absolute:
'...although the enjoyments of the worker have risen, the social
satisfaction that they give has fallen in comparison with the increased
enjoyments of the capitalist... Our desires and pleasures spring from
society, we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects
which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of a social
nature, they are of a relative nature' (Marx and Engels, 1968: 94).
Alienation is a concept much discussed by
Marx but relatively neglected in commentaries on Marxism, including
those by the World Socialist Movement.
Alienation means the subjugation of man by his own works (excuse the
sexist language), which have assumed the guise of independent things
(Kolakwski, 1978: 178).
"Estranged labor" - that is, labor performed not freely but as a means
of subsistence, the products of which are taken from the laborer -
turns "Man's species being... into a being alien to him." Under
capitalism, man is alienated from other men and from himself...Man can
only overcome alienation by doing away with private property and
creating communist society' (Stratman, n.d.: 164, with quotations from
Marx).
B
A concept allied to that of alienation is that of what Marx called the
fetishism of commodities. People are dominated by the products of their
own activities but do not realise this and attribute an independent
existence and power to those products:
'...the existence of things as commodities, and the value-relation
between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have
absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the
material relations arising therefrom. There is a definite social
relation between men that assumes in their eyes the fantastic form of a
relation between things...This I call the Fetishism which attaches
itself to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as
commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of
commodities' (Marx, 1954: 71-83).
For a discussion of
Marx's distinctive views on other economic concepts and processes -
such as capital accumulation, the (falling) rate of profit, and
inflation - see the Socialist Party pamphlet (1978).
(3)The
third area of Marxist
theory is
that of politics, or how the change from capitalism to socialism can be
implemented.
Marxian views on the nature of the socialist revolution - how we get
from 'here' to 'there' - may be divided into three sub-topics: the use
of coercive measures, leadership or self education, and the attitude to
non-socialist revolution.
Much has been made of Marx's use of the term 'dictatorship of the
proletariat'. A close study of his references to this idea shows that
he meant something very different from our modern understanding of
dictatorship as totalitarianism exemplified by Hitler and Stalin. To
understand Marx's use of the term we must 'return to the original Roman
institution of dictatura... the classic dictator held extensive but not
unlimited powers, powers to cope with an emergency but not to be left
entirely unchecked' (Hunt, 1974: 286). With this interpretation in mind
we may note Marx's remarks in a speech on the 7th anniversary of the
International in 1871:
'the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the
proletariat... In destroying the existing conditions of oppression by
transferring all the means of labour to the productive labourer, and
thereby compelling every able-bodied individual to work for a living,
the only basis for class rule and oppression would be removed. But
before such a change could be effected a proletarian dictature [Fr.
Dictatorship] would be necessary, and the first condition of that was a
proletarian army' (Marx, Engels and Lenin, 1975).
The hard line expressed in those words can scarcely be denied. Engels,
too, foresaw a violent revolution, though he wrote of English workers
being driven to the use of violence rather than choosing it:
'A revolution by a peaceful path is an impossibility, and only a
forcible overthrow of the existing unnatural conditions, a radical
ouster of the titled as well as the industrial aristocracy, can improve
the material situation of the proletarians. They are still held back
from this violent revolution by their peculiarly English respect for
the law; but the conditions in England described above cannot fail
shortly to produce general hunger among the workers, and then their
fears of starvation will be stronger than their fear of the law. This
revolution was an inevitable one for England (Werke, Germanversion of
Collected Works, quoted in Hunt, 1974: 111 ).
B
The revolution wasn't inevitable, of course. A socialist speaker was
nearer the mark in claiming that a starving man doesn't want socialism
- he wants a hot meal. The last word on this subject may be left to
Marx himself 'As long as other classes, and the capitalist class in
particular, still exist; and as long as the proletariat fights against
them ... it must employ coercive measures, that is, governmental
measures; so long it is still a class itself, and the economic
conditions which give rise to the class struggle and the existence of
classes have not yet disappeared and must be forcibly removed... With
its complete victory, therefore, its rule also comes to an end'
(Collected Works I: 321-3).
Strong measures, then, but temporary and no doubt contemplated with the
best of intentions. We must remember that Marx and Engels were men of
their time, and that time was one when the use of force by workers
against authority for political purposes was much more thinkable than
today. Having said that, I believe that no kind of 'dictatorship of the
proletariat', no matter how watered down and temporary, should form any
part of the socialist program at the end of the 20th century or beyond.
The socialist goal will be achieved by force of argument, by democratic
methods, not by force of arms or authoritarian methods.
B
A second major Marxian political theme is that of leadership versus
self-education of the working class. Here we have a much clearer
consensus that power invested in leaders is the wrong way to go, and
that workers educating themselves for the revolutionary task is the
right way: 'Communism rises above the enmity of classes, for it is a
movement that embraces all humanity and not merely the working classes.
Of course no communist proposes to avenge himself against any
particular individuals who are members of the bourgeoisie... Should the
proletariat become more Socialist in character its opposition to the
middle classes will be less unbridled and less savage... It may be
expected that by the time the rising comes the English working classes
will understand basic social problems sufficiently clearly for the more
brutal elements of the revolution to be eventually overcome - with the
help of the appearance of the Communist Party' (Engels, 1958: 335).
This is a very interesting and revealing passage. It shows a
progression of Marxist thought from a capitalist present that is in
many ways divisive and brutal, to a communist/socialist movement that
is in a transitional stage from divisiveness/brutality, to a future
society that will embrace all of humanity.
Clearly Engels quite reasonably expected workers to become less brutal
as they adopted socialist ideas. Reference to the help of the Communist
Party should not be taken as meaning the vanguardist CP or other
movements of the 20th century, rather the general movement of those in
favour of communism (another name for socialism).
B
Hunt's interpretation of Marxian views on workers' self education is
also closer to the Socialist Party's approach to this question rather
than that of the Communist or any other Party:
'Their [Marx and Engels'] own vision of communist revolution did not
rest on the fundamental postulate of mass immaturity, bur rather
pre-supposed the masses' prior self education... Perhaps the key
distinguishing feature of Marx and Engels' thinking... was precisely
their conviction, their ultimate democratic faith, that the masses
could and would educate themselves, organize themselves, liberate
themselves, and rule themselves' (1974: 290,341).
Sowell agrees with Hunt's interpretation of the Marxian concept of
socialist revolution, especially its democratic character and
opposition to leadership:
'The nature of a revolutionary movement was seen by Marx and Engels as
crucial for the kind of postrevolutionary society that could be
expected to emerge. A mass movement of workers meant that a democratic
regime was feasible after the overthrow of bourgeois rule. A small
conspiracy of professional revolutionaries implied a dictatorial
post-revolutionary regime (1985: 163).
We shall return to this question in the Evaluation section below. A
third Marxian political theme is their questionable support for
bourgeois revolution as a supposed step towards socialist revolution.
There is no doubt that Marx and Engels gained a great deal of
popularity in their own time - and since - by being openly on the side
of the workers in their struggle for better wages and conditions. In
the Communist Manifesto, their most persuasive and appealing call to
revolutionary action, Marx and Engels leave no doubt about the breadth
of their support for working class action: '...the communists
everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing
society and political order of things' (1952: 94).
This is not a reference to trade union action or to bread riots, etc.
but to bourgeois, anti-feudal movements Yet, away from the battlefield
of class struggle, Marx and Engels were far less sanguine about the
growth of socialist ideas within the working class movement.
Enthusiastic though they were about the Paris Commune, Marx had later
to admit that it was 'merely the rising of a city under exceptional
conditions' and that 'the majority of the Commune was in no wise
socialist, nor could it be' (quoted in Bottomore, 1983: 130).
The lack of socialist ideas among revolutionary movements such as the
Paris Commune must have been a bitter pill for Marx and Engels to
swallow, but it is right that they - and we - should do so.
(4) The
final area of Marxist
theory is
that of socialism/communism, the future form of society that will
replace capitalism.
Marx and Engels had relatively little to say about the future, partly
because they 'held the drawing up of blueprints for an ideal society to
be the very essence of utopianism' (Hunt, 1974: 212). Nevertheless,
what they did say was usually positive and in line with their generally
optimistic view of human nature and the capacity of workers to build a
better, more equal and more truly human society than that of
capitalism. In particular, Marx wrote of the variety of useful and
pleasurable work that would be available to people, in this well-known
passage:
'In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of
activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes,
society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for
me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning,
to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after
dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman,
shepherd or critic' (Collected Works, vol.5: 47).
On another page he summed up the same thought as follows: 'In a
communist society there are no painters but only people who engage in
painting among other activities' (p.394). Commentators sympathetic to
Marxism discuss his other ideas about the socialist future, sometimes
pointing out that Marx was an idealist in his own way:
'The picture of a harmonious community, a society without conflict in
which all human needs are satisfied, and so forth - all this can be
found in Marx in similar formulations to those of the utopians. But
socialism means more to Marx than a welfare society, the abolition of
competition and want, the removal of conditions that make man an enemy
to man: it is also, and above all, the abolition of the estrangement
between man and the world, the assimilation of the world by the human
subject' (Kolakowski, 1978: 224).
Communism, as envisioned by Marx, was to be "a society in which the
full and free development of every individual forms the ruling
principle", a society "in which the free development of each is the
condition for the free development of all" ... This was even more
important than the material standard of living' (Sowell 1985:25):
'What [Marx and Engels] envisaged for the future society, from its very
beginning, was a kind of participatory democracy organized without any
political leaders or administrators at all, which has nowhere been
established in a national government, and which requires some effort of
imagination and historical understanding for the present-day reader to
grasp' (Hunt, 1974: xiii).
But some statements by Marx and Engels about the socialist/communist
future seem to show that they were not entirely immune from a
conception of that future still rooted in the capitalist past. Engels,
arguably out of character with the bulk of his writings, let the
following slip in one of his letters:
'... we still lack the technicians, agronomists, engineers, chemists,
architects, etc. But if worse comes to worst we can buy these just as
well as the capitalists do; and if a stern example is made of a few
traitors which are sure to crop up among this lot - then they will find
it in their own interest to stop robbing us. But outside of such
specialists, we can get along very well without the rest of the
"educated people"...' (Werke, quoted in Draper, vol. 2: 543).
Engels does seem to have suffered from a kind of
inverted intellectual snobbery, a characteristic that is of doubtful
value to a project designed to unite the whole of humanity: '... the
"academically educated people" have far more to learn from the workers,
all in all, than the latter have to learn from them' (p.515).
Some Marxist writing on the future socialist/communist society is
concerned with what will happen, and what will be possible, in its
early and later stages. A particular worry about scarcity of goods in
the early stages led Marx to consider labour time vouchers or
certificates: 'What we have to deal with here is a communist society,
not as it has developed on its own foundations but, on the contrary,
just as it emerges from capitalist society; and which is thus in every
respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with
the birth-marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.
Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society - after
the deductions have been made, exactly what he contributes to it. What
he has contributed to it is his individual quantum of labour' (1970:15).
Two points here. One is that modern production is social, not
individual. It is doubtful whether the value of the 'individual quantum
of labour' could have been measured in Marx's time except in the
crudest terms of time. It is even more doubtful whether such a measure
could be made today. The second point is adequately dealt with in the
Socialist Party ( 1978) publication of the article 'Labour time
vouchers'. Marx made it quite clear that, if labour time vouchers were
used in socialism, this would be a temporary measure resulting from the
comparatively low level of technology. Today potential abundance
resulting from improved technology has made the idea of labour time
vouchers quite outdated. It will no doubt become even more outdated in
future.
Evaluation
Some
evaluation, as well as straight
reporting, of Marxist
writing has
been presented above. Here I shall extend this by discussing how far
socialists today can usefully draw on the work of Marx and Engels, and
in what ways we should frankly admit that their ideas are either now
outdated or were misguided in the first place.
First philosophy or world view. There is no doubt in my mind that
socialists should continue today, as our comrades have done in the
past, to regard the immense sweep and authority of Marxist thought as
extremely valuable to the task of replacing capitalism with socialism.
Neither Marx nor Engels were specialists in the sense of concentrating
on any one aspect of the socialist movement. They wrote, sometimes in a
very detailed way, on economics but they were not primarily economists.
They were interested in the history of humankind through all its stages
of development from primitive communism to capitalism, but their
history was not merely academic - it was for a revolutionary purpose.
Sometimes a writer sympathetic to the ideas of Marx and Engels can
interpret them in a novel way, one that brings out the best in what
they had to say and perhaps sees in their words a meaning that the
original authors may not have intended but would very probably have
agreed with. Thus Kolakowski:
`Communism puts an end to the division of life into public and private
spheres, and to the difference between civil society and the state; it
does away with the need for political institutions, political
authority, and governments, private property and its source in the
division of labour. It destroys the class system and exploitation; it
heals the split in man's nature and the crippled, one-sided development
of the individual... social harmony is to be sought not by a
legislative reform that will reconcile the egoism of each individual
with the collective interest, but by removing the causes of antagonism.
The individual will absorb society into himself thanks to
de-alienation, he will recognize humanity as his own internalized
nature. Voluntary solidarity, not compulsion or the legal regulation of
interests, will ensure the smooth harmony of human relations... the
powers of the individual cam only flourish when he regards them as
social forces, valuable and effective within a human community and not
in isolation. Communism alone makes possible the proper use of human
abilities' (1978: 179).
This is communism/socialism in its most profound and all-embracing
conception. Though it can be shown to relate to everyday life, now and
in a future society that we can help to shape, it is a highly
intellectual approach. We should not be afraid to combine it with a
more emotive, more artistic approach, such as that of William Morris.
But this is not the place to pursue that thought.
To some extent the debate between materialism and idealism, in which
Marx and Engels engaged so prominently, is an artificial one. Yes, we
should never lose sight of the basic material nature of life. But the
Hegelian dialectic, which Marx sensibly reversed, serves to remind us
that ideas and ideals are also an essential part of human life. The
debate between structure and action, which some philosophers and
sociologists carry on today, is also not a matter of either-or but of
both-and. We need society to have developed structures of (potential)
production to meet all reasonable human needs, but we also need
informed and educated action on the part of a majority of the world's
population to change those structures.
A second Marxist concern was with the analysis of capitalism. In the
more than hundred years since Marx and Engels were writing, capitalism
has changed drastically, though not fundamentally. It is still a system
of exploitation, still one in which commodity production alienates us
from what we produce - and even, in a sense, from ourselves. With some
justification it is argued that Marx and Engels were less concerned
about poverty than about alienation. Without downplaying the suffering
and deprivation caused by poverty, we should also recognise the
abjectly poor quality of life that capitalism offers its supporters.
Think of rush-hour sardine-tinlike mass transport, the eminently
throw-away Sun newspaper, the excruciatingly dumbed-down Noel Edmunds
TV show - and much more.
Most critics of Marxist economics believe in capitalism. Some of them -
like Cassidy ( 1997), discussed in Donnelly (1998) - are happy to
applaud Marx's analysis of where power lies in capitalist society but
are opposed to overthrowing that society. However, it is possible to
criticise some of Marx's views on capitalism while supporting his call
to abolish it. Thus Stratman criticises Marx for relying on the self
interest of the working class:
'Though it is destined to act as the agent of revolution, in Marx's
paradigm the working class puts and end to human exploitation not as a
conscious goal on behalf of all humanity, but as the inevitable
by-product of ending its own exploitation. It accomplishes the general
interest of humanity by acting in its own self interest' (n. d. : 166).
It is true that working-class pursuit of its own self interest has so
far led only to trade unionism, not socialism. As we have seen, Marx
and Engels did offer to 'support any revolutionary movement against the
existing society and political order of things.' They did not qualify
this support by insisting that it be based on socialist/communist
understanding rather than on mere physical reaction against a class of
exploiters. They paid the price for this in disillusion when uprisings
such as the Paris Commune failed to spark the introduction of classless
society.
Which brings us to the third theoretical issue of politics. Marx and
Engels were spectacularly wrong in their prediction of when the
communist revolution would take place. In 1845 Engels prophesied the
end of capitalism by 1852-3, and he greeted the depression of 1847 in a
way that leaves little doubt he believed it to be the death knell of
capitalism (Hunt, 1974:141 ). It is not a great crime to be guilty of
over-optimism about when socialism will come (though it is unwise, to
say the least, to set a target date for its achievement). What is much
more worrying is the misplaced confidence Marx and Engels had in the
workers' self education leading fairly rapidly to their adopting
socialist ideas.
Of course it may be that Marx and Engels actually equated self
education with the process of becoming a socialist. But I think a more
plausible explanation is that they were tinged with the idea, common
among Trotskyists, some anarchists and others today, that the immediate
steps to be taken by those who want revolutionary change are to
encourage the workers to be 'active' in some way.
Never mind that the 'activity' ('stop the closures', 'oppose the cuts',
'reclaim the streets', or whatever) is only defensive activity within
the profit system - it is at least doing something and not just
talking. One can imagine Marx and Engels poring over drafts of Capital
and saying something like 'The workers will never understand all this
stuff. What they need is something rousing but simple. Let's give them
a Manifesto that has a few good slogans and includes a list of
immediate demands.'
Perhaps the biggest difference between
capitalism then and now is the enormous growth in the scope and
pervasiveness of the mass media of communication and persuasion. And in
the growth of hegemony, a concept not used by Marx and Engels, but one
which is a logical extension of alienation, which they did recognise.
Hegemony has different meanings, but the one most relevant to this
discussion is class domination through the active participation of the
subordinate class. In our daily activities we as producers and
consumers participate in creating the conditions and social relations
that shape our lives. A practice is hegemonic to the degree that its
structure is defined by elites, by centralised social structures,
rather than being controlled by its users.
The capitalism of the Marxist era was more openly class-divided and
coercive than the capitalism of today. Then it was more obviously their
system - now it is too often our system, if it is seen as a system at
all. Marx and Engels were right to insist that 'the emancipation of the
working class must be the act of the working class itself (1952: 19).
They were no doubt sincere in urging members of the working class to
educate themselves for the revolutionary task. But they failed to
foresee the extent to which workers would educate themselves to run
capitalism rather than overthrow it. This leads us finally to what is
probably the weakest element in the Marxist exposition: the nature of
the socialist/communist society that is to replace capitalism.
By refusing to write recipes for future cookshops, by failing to talk
about the future society except in very general terms for fear of being
dubbed 'idealist', they in fact signaled that the building of socialism
- as distinct from the opposition to capitalism - was not high on their
agenda. Yet for socialists the building of the new society, by spelling
out what common ownership, democratic control, production solely for
use, and free access mean as a practical alternative that people can
support now, must be at the top of our agenda.
I'll end with a hypothetical but hopefully not valueless question. Do
we need a Marx and Engels today? The answer is mainly yes but partly
no. We need people of the intellectual stature of Marx and Engels to
help put across our ideas. It would be splendid if we could publish a
paperback edition of something like Capital, with an updated, critical
and unputdownable account of the contemporary profit system. Less
desirable would be a Communist Manifesto for the New Millennium, though
one without immediate demands for the reform of capitalism could find a
place in our list of publications.
Author: S.Parker
(This article can be found at www.worldsocialism.org and an e-mail
address is given there for any comments or feedback you would like to
make)
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