Sunday, January 10, 2021

Marxism is more than just a tool for analyzing the present. But it's not an all-inclusive blueprint for the future

Book review of Robert Ware’s Marx on Emancipation & Socialist Goals: Retrieving Marx for the Future  published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

 

Published in Science and Society, October 2020

 

One of Ware’s overriding arguments is that Marx (more than Engels and Lenin) was reluctant to draw up a blueprint for future developments and specifically for the communist society he saw as feasible in the current stage. For Marx “the future should not be laid out for others – those who will live it” (133). Thus, for instance, Marx contemplated “many phases” following capitalism “but leaves the vast expanse before [the achievement of communism] and afterwards open and undetermined” (189). Along these lines, Ware notes that Marx rejected the idealism of the utopian socialists and Hegel and only “coquetted” (a word used throughout the book as well as in the title of a chapter) with the dialectic. Ware notes that in Capital with a “sprinkling of ‘contradictions’ and ‘crises” here and there… Marx does not appear to be tied to dialectics” as most of the explanation and elaboration of the concept “was left to Engels” (41-42). In keeping with what Ware claims was Marx’s view, the author states that it is appropriate “to think of dialectics as preconceptions and ways of thinking for approaching phenomena rather than laws or rules that determine phenomena,” that is, the concept is “open-ended” (55).

By downplaying Marx’s adherence to the dialectic, Ware fails to distinguish between the idealistic content of Hegelian dialectics and Marx’s version of the concept. This is hardly a minor shortcoming. The elder Marx may not have made frequent reference to the dialectic as did Engels, but he clearly argued that all societies have been subject to internal contradictions (thesis-antithesis) that eventually express themselves in the form of head-on class confrontation and then systemic change. The alternative to this dynamic for those who purport to favor radical change, and even Marxism, is positivism with its evolutionary and deterministic assumptions, (such as in the case of technological determinists like the analytical Marxist G.A. Cohen, who Ware frequently refers to and expresses admiration for). In contrast, the dialectic, which was at the center of Marx’s view of history and society, not only envisions ongoing and inevitable conflict but also complexity given the multiplicity of internal contradictions at any given moment.  

Ware’s discussion of historical materialism is in line with his view of the dialectic as “open-ended.” Ware quotes Marx and Engels in The German Ideology as saying that abstractions about historical processes “‘by no means afford a recipe or schema, as does philosophy, for neatly trimming the epochs of history’” (66) and that (in the words of Marx) “every historical period has laws of its own” (74). Ware claims that for Marx socialism per se was not a “science” even though as a movement socialism “depended on scientific studies” (28).  One may infer that for Ware, Marxism is a tool of analysis, but one that leads to certain self-evident truths. If it did not, Marxism would be nothing more than a methodology and not stand for socialism, communism, internationalism or any number of other concepts.

On issue after issue, Ware rejects what he considers to be quixotic and romantic as well as sectarian interpretations (such as “numerous narrow interpretations”– p. 128 – based on economism) of Marx’s writings. Along these lines, Ware denies that Marx advocated the routine rotation of labor at the workplace. Despite Marx’s polemics with the utopian socialists, he is often accused of being “a utopian with the unrealizable and naïve ideal of modern industry without a division of labour” (80). Even though Marx expressed “interest in diversity of development and variety of talent” (91) he stopped short of systematically applying these goals to the labor force. Ware also minimizes the importance of class consciousness on Marx’s thinking, the use of the term “class for itself” notwithstanding. In his discussion of the issue of class consciousness, Ware warns against the tendency to “saddle him [Marx] with unwanted Hegelian views” (103). More important than class consciousness for Marx was class unity and organization, especially in the form of the trade union movement.   

Ware argues that Marx’s view of nationalism was consistent with his appreciation of the “heterogeneity of human life” (135). Ware rejects the notion that internationalism and nationalism are incompatible, if not diametrically opposed, and that ipso facto Marx spurned the latter. According to Ware, “the claim that workers have no country is so often used, frequently in a misleading way” (116) by, among others, Lenin who stated “‘Marxism cannot be reconciled with nationalism’” (123). (It should be noted, however, that Lenin viewed nationalism among oppressed people as a positive force.) Ware concludes: “nationalism which acknowledges a diversity of nations does not have to be the embarrassment [for the left] that it has often been take to be” (135).

Marx, according to Ware, envisioned the achievement of socialism as essentially a humanistic process. In the first place, he did not discard the possibility of overthrowing the bourgeoisie in some countries by “peaceful means” (133) and never offered “any reason for initiating violence” (164). In the second place, Marx never wavered in his commitment to democracy. Ware adheres to the interpretation of the use of the term “dictatorship of the proletariat” put forward by Hal Draper according to which Marx’s intention was largely to refute “those socialists who wanted a dictatorship of a small group or vanguard to lead the proletariat” (162).

Ware’s discussion of democracy leads him to contrast Marx’s thinking with that of Lenin. While Marx envisioned the state in the transition to communism as the “rule by the proletariat,” Lenin “had the sense of the state acting for the proletariat in dictatorial ways” (191). Ware, however, fails to define the term “dictatorial ways,” nor does he distinguish Lenin’s thoughts on the subject between before and after the Soviet revolution of 1917. In general, Ware fails to bring into his analysis the formidable challenges including the use of violence that all revolutionary processes have faced throughout history from the old ruling class, and which Marx and Engels were acutely aware of. Lenin’s response to the repressive side of the ruling class was his thesis of “democratic centralism,” namely that the tactics and strategy employed by the revolutionary movement depend on the existing political climate. In other words, extreme centralism at the expense of grassroots participation may be necessary depending on circumstances. Ware omits any reference to these historical realities from a book that is otherwise a cohesive and well-argued interpretation of the writings of the father of communism.

Steve Ellner



 

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