Marx the bourgeois.
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There is bringing about transformations for necessity on one hand, such as are encompassed by our slogan production for use, which I accept. But production for production’s sake is not necessary. And nature is more than just stuff to be transformed to serve humans. Environments and other animals exist not just as human resources but as beings and their nonhuman environments and lives in themselves.
Surely socialism would mean less production, as useless and dangerous production and overproduction will no longer be!
Marx was not advocating production for production’s sake. That was precisely his criticism of capitalism. However, he accepted that capitalism was a necessary stage through which society had to pass before socialism (and production for consumption’s sake, ie for use) could become possible and so therefore was a period of production for production’s sake.
In the passage Camus refers to, Marx is saying that Ricardo was right for his time (he died in 1823). Here is the whole passage in context (it’s from Theories of Surplus Value, Part II):
“Ricardo, rightly for his time, regards the capitalist mode of production as the most advantageous for production in general, as the most advantageous for the creation of wealth. He wants production for the sake of production and this with good reason. To assert, as sentimental opponents of Ricardo did, that production as such is not the object, is to forget that production for its own sake means nothing but the development of human productive forces, in other words the development of the richness of human nature as an end in itself.”
In saying that Marx said Ricardo was “absolutely right” Camus was going too far (to put it politely), since Marx clearly says “rightly for his time” , i.e not absolutely right for all time. But Camus was really criticising Stalinism not Marxism (unlike Sartre, and to his credit, he was not a fellow traveller of state-capitalist Russia).
So, Marx was not advocating “production for production’s sake” as such for all time (that would be to advocate capitalism for all time) but merely that Ricardo was right to have advocated this in 1817 as, at that time, the forces of production were not yet developed enough, i.e. capitalism had still to create the material basis for socialism by developing the productive forces to the point where production for consumption could be inaugurated.
Of course you could argue that Marx was wrong to have said that capitalism had to have developed before socialism became possible, but was he?
The Socialist Standard reviewed that book of Camus’s in 1973:
http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2010/02/camus-portrait-of-rebel.html?m=1
Is JO leading us down the path of those Greens who advocate degrowth? (Bookchin did a debunking of the Deep Greens and eco-primitivists)
If so then we do agree…BUT…ONLY when we have raised the living standards of all peoples to a decent level acceptable to them and for a short while…”rightly for OUR time”… that means raising production and output expending increased resources and materials and labour. However, this will be balanced by the reduction of socially wasteful production such as defence and armaments and all the paraphernalia of the buying and selling economy.
We will then reach what Marx called ” simple reproduction” but what is now described as a steady-state economy or zero-growth.
ALB wrote: “Of course you could argue that Marx was wrong to have said that capitalism had to have developed before socialism became possible, but was he?”
But don’t forget, regarding the potential development of Russia in the late 1870s, Marx himself had argued precisely that – ie. that the then Russia didn’t have to have developed capitalism before socialism.
So, in your terms, Marx did ‘argue that Marx was wrong’.
Marx didn’t believe in ‘necessity’, ‘material’ or otherwise, because he was a social productionist who believed that humans could change their products.
When he came to study Russia, he seems to have realised that he’d been far too ‘deterministic’ in some of his middle-period works.
He realised (again) that ‘necessity’ and ‘determination’ prevent conscious change. By the 1870s, Marx was thinking much more like he had in the 1840s.
Alan, ALB, I am glad to read you on the matter. I was just putting out feelers.
Language remains the problem here, I think, when it comes to taking our message to the young “Greens” etc.
They think that, being Marxists, we are “conquest of nature” people – like “Marxists” have so often been.
And precisely, Stalin was constructing a capitalist industrial economy, so growth was his priority: hence the Left’s constant emphasis on production.
We must make it clear from the start that we are not of that ilk. Unfortunately, as soon as “socialism” or “Marx” are mentioned, no one wants to listen, because of the damage the Left has done!
“as soon as “socialism” or “Marx” are mentioned, no one wants to listen,”
A few years ago I recall those millennial surveys and Marx was declared the a most prominent figure
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/461545.stm
And there were many others with similar results confirming his importance.
And the polls in the USA that more people are increasingly interested in socialist ideas.
And from anecdotal evidence eco-socialist is increasingly a popular term within the environmentalist movement.
What distances us is not our message (although it could be presented in language which might be resonate more receptively) but that we are not present at the climate protests and our voice is not being heard. We have no audience to listen to us. Despite our valiant efforts, our spoken word, our writings, our social media is ineffectual. We’re out-shouted.
Sad truth is that we are invisible. Even sadder is what people think is Marxism and what is socialism is not what we mean by the terms.
How to convey that understanding without being accused of being pedantic is still something we need to fully work out
Good point, Alan. I agree.
We must make it clear from the start that we are not of that ilk. Unfortunately, as soon as “socialism” or “Marx” are mentioned, no one wants to listen, because of the damage the Left has done!
This is true up to a point, I do notice though a countermovement even within Left circles to somewhat undo the damage the Left has historically done. It began with a open disassociation from Stalin (commencing obviously with the Trots) and in small ways is working towards a disassociation from Lenin, in many ways the fountainhead of the rottenness we have had to put up with as socialists. The concept of “Marx the ecosocialist” is a way of expediting this process…
The Socialist Standard reviewed that book of Camus’s in 1973:
http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2010/02/camus-portrait-of-rebel.html?m=1
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The The Standard article states,
Camus’ own proposals. His main idea seems to be the relationship between means and ends:
“Does the end justify the means? That is possible, but what will justify the end? To that question, which historic thought leaves pending, rebellion replies: the means.”
He has earlier quoted with approval Marx saying that “An end which requires unjust means is not a just end”, (My emphasis).
I am unable to find precisely where Marx said this. I searched Marxists.org for it.
That expression of Marx was distorted by Lenin, to justify the coup and the atrocities of the Bolshevik Party, and the expression used by Lenin was also used by Machiavelli but originally came from Napoleon
Widely attributed to Machiavelli’s The Prince, which does reflect this philosophy but does not use the phrase in this wording.
The closest Machiavelli comes to actually saying “the ends justify the means” quote is from Chapter XVIII of “The Prince.” Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you.
A possible original source is Ovid’s Heroides (ca. 10 BC), which says “exitus ācta probat” (“the outcome justifies the deeds”).
So yes, I am aware of the distortions, but I am looking for source of the original Marx statement of, “An end which requires unjust means is not a just end”.
I don’t agree one bit with as soon as we mention Socialism or Marx it turns young people off? The OP, is expressing a personal opinion. There’s no evidence to back it up.
Being a socialist, admittedly in the Labour Party is something most young people see as a good thing. Many young people are attracted to the SWP and other left wing groups claiming to be socialist.
Was it the spilt of a split of CPGB who’s magazine Living Marxism (which was stocked in WHSmith incidentally. Are WHSmith still going? I personally thought wasn’t a put off in anyway, but a positive thing. I had no real idea about Marx at the time, and was intrigued by it. I didn’t actually read it for some reason, unbeknown to me…….probably because I was an avid reader of the Socialist in Socialist Standard which wasn’t a turn off. I did however, have a little worry when the Socialist Standard was referred to as the SS…..it still does, but this has more to do with the SS and Nazism?
Quoting Marx, for example, “those who produce the wealth should own it, it’s fairer”, how is that something that is going to turn young people off or anybody else for that matter?
Another example; “Marx never signed the death warrant for anyone” which is a rebuttal to those who say Marxism killed 100m, usually posted on the Socialist Party Twitter feed.
The Party must take a great deal of credit for not only talking about Marx, after all we’re a Marxist party, but for being honest and open and not shying away from Marx at all, from fellow workers.
YFS JamesFor those who imagine that it is the word “Socialist” that is putting people off, here are the results of the Money Free Party in recent elections:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Poole_Borough_Council_election#Canford_Heath_West
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_West_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s
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