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Title: Karl Marx: Not Infallible Author: Thom Holterman Date: 2014 Language: en Topics: Karl Marx, marxism, anarchist analysis, economics, critique Source: Original text, contributed by author
Many well respected leftist intellectuals urge us to look to the
philosophy of Karl Marx for revolutionary inspiration and critiques of
capital. This is true even of many who hold unorthodox interpretations
of Marxism and reject some aspects of his theories, such as the
contemporary French philosopher, Etienne Balibar.
Balibar’s 2014 collection of essays, The Philosophy of Marx, introduces
fundamental Marxist concepts and principles and asserts that they are
more important than ever. However, why should we consider Marxist theory
of historical process to be so important or accurate when they failed to
anticipate so much of what happened even during his lifetime?
Marx habitually criticized anarchists, who he perhaps correctly saw as
his main political opponents, for instance, denigrating the
individualist anarchist Max Stirner (1806-1856) as "Saint Max,” and
expending enormous amounts of intellectual energy in fostering the
hegemony of his theories.
Although Marx treated the French anarchist Pierre Proudhon (1809-1865)
with incredible contempt, Proudhon, in The System of Economic
Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty (1846), first developed
most of the concepts for critically analyzing the capitalist system,
such as the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, the cyclical
crisis, the role of technology, division of labor, competition,
monopoly, and the concentration of capital. Yet, Marx characterized
Proudhon as a petit bourgeois and derided his book as "The Poverty of
Philosophy.” But later, he adopted all of these proudhonian concepts and
developed them in Capital.
Over the years Marx expressed equal contempt for Bakunin. In 1842,
Bakunin published The Reaction in Germany, which he ended with the
familiar statement that, "The passion for destruction is also a creative
passion." In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx expresses a similar
perspective, asserting that existing society must not only be destroyed,
it will be important to create an alternative.
Today, we refer to this idea as prefiguration. But anarchists and
Marxists differ about what prefiguration actually means. Anarchists
think in terms of creating new social structures here and now, while
Marxists feel it is necessary to wait until after the predicted collapse
and the establishment of socialism to change social relations. This
results in differences over whether to challenge the status quo with new
ways of doing things right now or simply work for small achievable
reforms while awaiting the revolution.
Marx asserted that his concept of dialectical materialism, how history
progressed towards socialism, was a scientific theory which enabled one
to discern the many contradictions within capitalism which would bring
about its collapse. He predicted that the newly emerged proletarian
class, central to capital for production and exploitation, would also
become its ultimate contradiction, bringing about the coming revolution
resulting in a radical democracy and communism.
But, Marx wasn't really able to predict very much with his supposedly
scientific theory. In the 1848 European popular upheavals, his
prediction that the proletariat would dominate the revolutions did not
come to pass. Therefore, Marx had to rethink (and rewrite) his theses to
fit what actually did happen. His book Capital was the result.
In Vol. I of Capital (1867), Marx claimed to reveal the underlying
mechanisms of capitalism. Based on his analysis, he predicted that
capitalism was on the way to dying in industrialized countries,
especially in England. He reasoned that where capitalism had reached its
greatest maturity, it was ready to implode and give way to a proletarian
revolution, after which communism would prevail.
However, in 1871, a revolution emerged in a less industrialized country,
France, where agriculture dominated the economy. Contrary to Marx's
predictions about revolutions in countries with predominantly agrarian
economies, it resulted in the Paris Commune, a project that had positive
anarchist tendencies and influences.
So, a new doctrine had to be devised, the dictatorship of the
proletariat, to explain what was needed to create proletarian
revolutions in less industrialized countries. Marx did not live to
witness the effects of this innovation. But it was inherited by later
Marxists, including Lenin, Stalin, Mao and others, butchers who shaped
its results, and used it to justify the destruction of many millions of
lives.
Much of what Marx predicted would be the inevitable and necessary course
of socio-economic development, based on the scientific method he claimed
to have discovered, didn't come to pass. There is no shame in guessing
wrong, but his epigones shouldn't claim that he developed a scientific
method for understanding the capitalist system and infallibly predicting
the future.
We need to ask ourselves whether Marx's philosophy is of value to us
today, as Marxist critical thinkers like Balibar contend? Or, is it time
to reconsider Marx's negative judgment of Proudhon's ideas? Maybe the
title of Marx’s anti-Proudhon text, The Poverty of Philosophy, is more
appropriately applied to his own theory.
For example, consider the following.
By May of 1846 Proudhon was already worried about Marx's attempts to
develop the dialectic as a predictive tool, and wrote to Marx, urging
him, "let us not set ourselves up as apostles of a new religion. . ."
At the beginning of the Franco-Prussian war in July 1870, Marx
apparently (at least temporarily) forgot that he had called on
proletarians of all countries to unite in the 1848 Communist Manifesto.
On July 20, he wrote to his collaborator, Frederick Engels, welcoming
the victory of the German forces over the French state. After all, as a
result, he explained, the center of attention for socialism would move
from France to Germany and the German proletariat would become more
influential compared to their French counterpart. This would also
increase the influence of their theory compared to that of Proudhon.
Marx was willing to abandon internationalism in order to gain more
influence for his ideas.
While the dialectic led Marxists to expect a revolution in Britain, a
country with a highly developed industrial economy, it failed to predict
that a revolution would break out in 1917 in Russia, a country with an
agrarian economy. And, it certainly did not foresee that the Bolshevik
takeover would lead to the grossest kind of political repression and
economic exploitation.
Events in Germany offer another example of the failure of the dialectic
to help people anticipate anything. Marx had great hopes for the German
social democrats (as he noted in his letter to Engels mentioned above).
However, the Dutch anarchist Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis (1848-1919)
didn't rely on the dialectic and was able to analyze the politics of the
German social democrats and the situation in Germany differently. In
1897, he wrote, Socialism In Danger. His criticism of the German social
democrats anticipated their role from 1919 through the 1930s as servants
of established power and their suppression of revolutionary upsurges
following World War I.
The point is not to blame Marx for all of this. Everyone who was
involved in these specific situations bears responsibility for their
actions. But, Marx and the Marxists to follow asserted that his
dialectic was a scientific theory that enabled revolutionaries to
understand why and how historical processes develop. However, Marxist
theory wasn't able to anticipate how things worked out in the
revolutions that occurred during his lifetime. So, he had to revise his
theory to try to make it a better tool for anticipating what would
happen in later social upheavals. However, even after the various
revisions, Marx's supposedly scientific theory repeatedly predicted that
conditions were ripe for the end of capitalism, while that system still
continues to exist. So, it's time for his dialectical theory to be
recognized as irrelevant for understanding social-political processes in
the world. Whatever Marxist intellectuals like Balibar claim, Marx's
philosophy does not have any lasting value.