Marxism, despite common
opinion, is not an enemy of capitalism. Both Marxists and liberals want capitalism and view the emergence
of capitalism in European history as a salutary thing. Marx wants capitalism
because it is the necessary preparation for communism. In all kinds of ways: modern
industry provides the productivity necessary to form the material basis of
communism. The growing scale of corporations and formation of monopolies provide
the centrally-directed organization, the ‘socialization of production’, so that
industry can eventually be nationalized.[1] Perhaps
above all, factory work creates the organized, disciplined, and class-conscious
proletariat in ‘revolutionary combination’ who can lead the communist
revolution; and by the same process liquidates the reactionary, backwards
peasant class who are its most resistant enemies.[2] Capitalism
gives birth to its own gravediggers.
Marxism contains, to be
sure, an embedded critique of capitalism. But that critique is aimed at
revealing the internal contradictions of capitalism to show that capitalism is
not stable. Capitalism cannot be the
end-point of history; it is a transitional stage on the way to socialism and
finally communism.
This gives the lie to the
common opinion. Leftist anti-capitalism is not Marxism. The welfare state is
not Marxism. Hostility to the Industrial Revolution is not Marxism. Identity
politics is not Marxism. The misunderstanding is, first, that Marxism is essentially a critique a capitalism, and
second, that communism is proposed as an alternative
to capitalism: communism as a rival to capitalism.
This is a mistake!
Actually communism, according to the Marxist view, depends on capitalism and
builds on it. Communism is not a rival to capitalism; communism is the successor
to capitalism.
Marxism then is not in
origin a political philosophy. Marxism is first of all an analysis of history.[3] An
analysis of history on the basis of class relations—the structure of material
production and re-production in a given society—called historical materialism.
The image of ‘base and
superstructure’ is a common way to articulate this, but I do not much like it. If
it means only that the cultural character of a society has a great deal to do
with its structure of production, well and good. But when pressed farther, into
an attempt to elevate the historical analysis into a full epistemology and
metaphysics, it rapidly undermines itself. There is a line in the Communist Manifesto: “The charges
against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from
an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.”[4] Because
ideas change with material existence: all religion, morality, and philosophy
thus far are products of traditional, exploitative property relations.
This is simply
self-refuting. If the thoughts of a person are determined by the material basis
of society, and not at all by logical
connections, then there is no possibility of truthful human knowledge. If I
only think 2 + 2 = 4 because that is what I am conditioned by exploitative
property relations to think, and not because I have understood a logical
relationship, then there is no reason to say that the equation is true. Thought
becomes irrational and the question of truth or falsehood disappears. But
Marx’s own description of base and superstructure then falls as well. If
historical materialism is true, then thought is irrational; in which case we
have no basis for believing historical materialism is true, and so we need not
believe thought is irrational. It is kicking away the ladder on which one
stands.
Historical materialism is
summed up better in the famous quotation—perhaps the favourite quotation of
modern historians?—from the 18th
Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: “Men make their own history, but they do not
make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances,
but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”
It is precisely as a
method of historical analysis that Marxism seems to me most useful. As a
political philosophy it falls into the ‘millenarian’ or ‘apocalyptic’ species
which has bred the worst offspring that have afflicted the human race. There
seems something inherent in the hubris of claiming to unfold the workings and direction
of history, and to know where and when heaven on earth will come into being,
that releases people to do the most fiendish things, to throw away all
restraint and responsibility, to become so impatient with criticism or reasoned
argument that they will not endure it. In Marxism this is combined with a
hostility to religion and philosophy (as expressed in the quotation above)
which removes the ground for any morality other than ‘might makes right’—so
long as we are successful in bringing about the Revolution, all is justified.
This type of millenarian politics has produced the most savage century on
record.[5] We have
seen mass murder by governments, the wiping out of whole classes, nations, and
races, the deliberate systematic destruction of religion, custom, and the
family, the taking away of all property, and the attempt of a few to remake
society or even mankind from the ground up.
Marxism is by no means
the only millenarian politics of our century: the Sexual Revolution and
contemporary progressivism are of the same kind. The master idea seems to be
‘if only we can remove the source of oppression [racism, sexism, homophobia,
private property, the idea of sin, or whatever] we will enter a new world. In
pursuit of this we may throw away everything that stands in our way, including
traditional moral principles, and especially the family and the Church.’
The post-1960s New Left,
student radicalism, postmodernism in the academy, and political correctness,
all seem like a kind of Marxism without communism. They keep the revolutionary
motive, but without the revolutionary aim—with no particular goal in mind, it
has turned into revolution for revolution’s sake. Hence the favourite word is ‘subversion’.
We must always be overturning tradition, overturning the status quo, in a word:
overturning what is. Hence the
perpetually churning destruction we endure.
Two men can stand as
exemplars, and perfectly illustrate the change from the Old Left to the New
Left: Vladimir Lenin and Saul Alinsky. Lenin was a Marxist, and he had a
definite aim in mind to which he bent himself, and in Russia he achieved it. It
was horrific in the result, but nevertheless he achieved what he set out to do.
What did Saul Alinsky
want to do? In theory, all kinds of things, usually to do with improving the
well-being of the have-nots.[6] But read
his Rules for Radicals. What he
really cares about is not any particular end, but the game itself—the excitement of stirring up conflict, conflict
for its own sake. That is the perfect New Left activist: a revolutionary who
only wants to destroy, not to build.
Marxism is in its origin
an analysis of history. The political project flows from that. And Marxism is
not anti-capitalist. Marx was as interested in the development of capitalism as a positive thing as any classical
economist—Marx liked capitalism. He
liked it because he thought it ploughed and sowed the ground from which the
communist society would sprout.
[1] Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
(New York: International Publishers, 2008), 127.
[2] Marx and
Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New
York: International Publishers, 2007), 21.
[3] This explains
why Marxism has had such a decisive influence on historiography. And also,
incidentally, it explains why the only real Marx-Marxists I know are
historians; the non-historians tend to be some other kind of Leftist.
[4] Marx and
Engels, 28.
[5] See Charles
Tilly, Coercion and Capital in European
States: even by per capita
measures, the twentieth century saw by far the most people killed by state
violence.
[6] See the
wonderful lecture by Joseph Morris which I commented on earlier: http://crunchynotes.blogspot.ca/2014/06/joseph-morris-alinsky-for-dummies.html
