Marxism, II

Introducing Marxism, A Book Review, Part II

By John Taylor; 21 December, 2005

Yesterday we went through a distillation of the Communist Manifesto, a
sort of ghostly declaration of war: "A spectre is haunting Europe --
the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered
into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre." This warlike view of
things pervades Marx's thought. Here, in one sentence, is Marx's
summary of world history: "The history of all hitherto existing
societies is the history of class struggles." Karl Marx saw capitalism
as the final stage of this age old struggle between haves and
have-nots. Under capitalism there are two classes, the bourgeoisie who
own the means of production and the have-nots, a non-owning class to
whom he gave the Roman term, "proletariat." The proletariat are forced
by economic necessity to sell their labour to the bourgeoisie, which
means that they end up as exploited and helpless as the slaves of old.

In Ancient Rome the proletariat were the bottom rung, a garbage class
good only for brute labour and producing more children. The Romans
ruling class were terrified of a slave revolt, for good reason, since
the proletariat were very good at producing children and soon became
the majority. Under feudalism the poor majority got limited rights but
were still forced to work as peasants. As capitalism emerged, the
chains binding the proletariat became transparent but were just as
real. The Roman exploitative relationship remained essentially
unchanged, even emotionally, the bourgeoisie fearing the proletarians
and the proletariat hating them. Marx saw himself as an intellectual
Spartacus leading a revolt of the proletariat that he called the
Revolution.

Several times in Marx's lifetime, most notably the Paris Commune of
1871, the Revolution seemed to be happening but in a way reminiscent
of Gandhi, Marx always said: "The proletariat is not ready yet." Above
all, Marx believed that the Revolution would somehow end history
(remember, history _is_ class struggle). Out of the Revolution would
emerge a "dictatorship of the proletariat," and that would lead to a
utopia, one not only for proletarians but for all. He wrote only a few
spare lines on what would happen after the Revolution, and some are
quoted in "Introducing Marxism."

"If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is
compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a
class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class,
and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production,
then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the
conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes
generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a
class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and
class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free
development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
(Introducing Marxism, p. 5)

Thus communism is a free ticket into heaven that gets by the gate, St.
Peter, God and all that religious stuff. Instead of birth by devotions
and personal sacrifice, you get birth by history. This parturition has
as birth pangs the historical travail of the Revolution. But this
heaven still looks suspiciously similar to what people of faith have
been aiming at since day one. Marx's "free development of each part
acting as the condition for the free development of all" is mighty
close to the Golden Rule and its descendent, Immanuel Kant's
categorical imperative. This is no coincidence, as "Introducing
Marxism" points out, since Marx read Kant closely and placed the
categorical imperative at the center of his moral philosophy. If all
goes well, I will include jpegs of two pages detailing Marx's debt to
Kant from "Introducing Marxism" as enclosures in this mail-out. These
are the most important pages in the book and give a good idea of what
an "Introducing..." book looks like inside. The Kant in Marx makes up
what is called today "ethical Marxism," and it is the part of Marxism
that has best stood the test of time.

After Marx, Marxism was modified and souped up, most notably by V.I.
Lenin and Antonio Gramci. It became a dominant factor in political
events. Then in mid-20th Century it took a flying body slam from Karl
Popper, who in "The Poverty of Historicism" demolished Marx's most
precious belief, that his system was scientific.

"How could Marxism be scientific?", asked Popper, "A scientific theory
by definition must be capable of being proven wrong. Your ideas
cannot, not even in principle. So they belong to the realm of
non-science, not to say religion."

For an atheistic ideology to be accused of being a quasi-religion is
of course anathema. Marxism never really recovered. After all,
religions are much better at being religions than Marxism; they have
been in the business for millennia. After Popper, Marxism's body was
picked over by socialists and anti-communists alike. Postmodernists
and semiologists picked at the corpse in the 1970's and 1980's.

What remains today is now known as postmarxism. The most prominent
exponents of postmarxism are Laclau and Mouffe, who modified the
Marxist idea of class struggle into something less reductionist,
something closer to what is actually happening in the world, something
they call agonistic pluralism. In place of "communist utopia," the
preferred term is now "civil society," since democracy has taken a
place, at last, in the Marxist lexicon.

Agonistic (from the Greek for struggle, or athletic contest) pluralism
is the Baha'i slogan of "unity in diversity" stood on its head. It is
the view that there are many classes and identities, not just
bourgeois haves and proletarian have-nots, there are any number of
"class loyalties," including ethnicity, races, gender, nationality,
etc. A society where all conflicts are resolved would be a science
fiction nightmare. Therefore "societies today should foster democratic
and low-intensity conflicts between a variety of different groups."
Agonistic pluralism, to my mind, resembles the original meaning of
"Agon," the mentality of sports. The way to promote tennis is to stage
tennis tournaments, the only way to make football popular is to have
interesting, real contests between football teams. Government is a
sort of referee whose job is not to end the match but to help it along
by keeping order, assuring that the rules are adhered to by all sides.

I will come back to this soon, I hope, but now I want to cite the ten
point program made up by the authors of "Introducing Marxism" to
summarize the revisions of postmarxism. They contrast this ten point
program with that of the Communist Manifesto that starts off the book
(we cited that yesterday). As Baha'is, of course, we cannot help but
juxtapose both 10 point programs with the 10 or 12 point principle
program that the Master promulgated to the West in His journeys
between 1911 to 1913. Here is the postmarxist manifesto in ten points
(my comments are in square brackets):

1. Socialism does not work and neither does any other grand narrative.
The ideologies associated with them are always false.

2. Classes are degenerating and disappearing and attempts to explain
things in terms of them are reductionist and wrong. There are many
other significant sources of identity and conflict, such as gender,
ethnicity, sexual preference. [still no mention of religion, is
there?]

3. The state as such is always dangerous and cannot deliver effective
social welfare; this can only be done by civil society.

4. Any form of central planning is inefficient and tends to
corruption; markets are the only mechanism which allows for fair
distribution. [Which would explain why the Chinese government still
considers itself communist]

5. The old left approach to politics always ends in authoritarian
regimes which crush civil society. Politics should exist only at the
local level, with local struggles over local issues. [How is that ever
going to happen without a unified, central world government, even if
it works mostly through moral authority?]

6. Conflicts (antagonisms) are inevitable and while some may be
resolved, this merely transforms and clears the ground for further,
newer antagonisms. An overview of all conflicts and their eventual
resolution is impossible. All we can have are understandings of
particular situations at particular moments. [how is this different
from the faith perspective, that the world is inherently chaotic and
conflictive, that God is inherently ordered, and human understanding
of both inherently limited?]

7. This is a good thing, since the resolution of all conflicts would
result in a stale, rigid society. An ideal would be a pluralist
democracy, providing a stable framework for many local conflicts.

[Mostly this is the Baha'i position, except the struggle part. The
alternative is `Abdu'l-Baha's paradigm of diversity as "flowers in the
garden," humans have no more reason to struggle in the Kingdom of God
than flowers do in a formal garden. The beauty of each plays off the
beauty of its neighbors. Although we know that flowering plants are
engaged in evolutionary struggles, being domesticated means that they
operate under artificial selection, not natural selection. Thus
staging fights between them would make no sense and do good to
nobody.]

8. Revolutions either cannot happen or end badly. The alternative is
democratic transition.

9. Solidarity can exist within and across a range of different groups,
it is a humanitarian gesture. A belief in class solidarity as the only
valid form of solidarity is harmful to this process. [Change the name
of this to "oneness of humanity," move it up to number one or two, and
you have `Abdu'l-Baha's "principle manifesto," the world's first
declaration of peace]

10. In an interdependent, globalized world, anti-imperialism has had
its day. The world is too complex. [anti-anything is not going to cut
it. We need positive peace, to stand for something not against. Why
not let God introduce His Kingdom?]

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com