Marxism: Inclusive or Reductive? (2016)

From the November 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Upon reading Karl Marx’s Capital for the first time many are surprised by its inclusive nature. Instead of the anticipated focus on economics the reader finds themselves immersed in philosophy, history and literature together with many other references. This is not only a reflection of the author’s well-known reputation as a polymath but it also reminds us that all disciplines are dependent, to a lesser or greater degree, on each other. But how can we reconcile this with the received notion of Marxism as a reductive political theory; that in the final analysis all social relations are dependent on the mode of production?

This may well be one of the reasons that Karl himself was sure that he was not a Marxist. But if a philosopher or historian was to exhaustively give you an account of a social phenomenon without reference to the relevant contemporary economic structure (as some still attempt to do) many of us would feel it to be incomplete at best and misleading at worst. This is primarily what socialists mean when we say we’re Marxists or that we’re using a Marxist analysis; the attempt to see through prevailing ideology and expose the underlying economic relationships that create such intellectual superstructures. This seemingly reductive technique has alienated many intellectuals who like to defend their own sectarian esoteric disciplines by reference to the intellectual division of labour. They reject any attempt to suggest that the multiplicity of theories and philosophies can have a common origin. So is there a contradiction inherent within Marxism between inclusiveness and reductionism?  

When a Marxist speaks of ideology they mean something much more extensive than merely a set of explicit ideas. We refer to the ‘normalisation’ of political and moral values. For instance most people accept the principal of production for profit as a ‘normal’ relationship between people engaged in industry. Socialists point to the ‘abnormality’ of a relationship based on the exploitation of one human by another. Because it has become an unquestioned relationship most economists fail to see its underlying exploitative nature. Without the benefit of a Marxist perspective they can never fully understand economics. Some propagandists are aware of this and for them the infamous phrase of Dr Goebbels that: ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it’ seems as true as it ever was. This is not to say that all studies in economics since Marx have been pointless but they are incomplete without his contributions.

Another feature of the relationship of exploitation within capitalism is called alienation. This occurs because of the lack of control the individual feels during their productive life. The great joy of creative production is replaced by a monotonous set of increasing targets and goals presided over by a ‘boss’ who makes the decisions in the name of profit. The resulting depression and emotional exhaustion will be presented to a doctor who will fail to see or fail to act on the basic underlying inhuman relationships that create such alienation. So again, in the absence of a Marxist analysis psychology and medicine must inevitably fail the individual in terms of their mental and physical health.

We can see that in the absence of a penetrating political analysis both the disciplines of economics and psychology are impotent. We can make a similar case for history, philosophy, sociology etc. (probably all of the ‘humanities’ within which, this author at least, includes the ‘social sciences’). Having made the case that many disciplines are incomplete without the insights available via the Marxist perspective, can we also say that Marxism itself would be weakened without the inclusion of at least some of the discoveries made by these other disciplines?

Could it be that rather than providing alternative explanations for social development they are, in fact, complementary parts of the same whole – at least potentially, once they’re stripped of ideological prejudice. The intellectual division of labour has served to disguise the real focus of study. This division, in its turn, serves the ideological purpose of preventing access to the truth. It is not that Marxism is reductive but that philosophy, economics, psychology, history, anthropology etc. are unaware that their goal is the same as Marxism – the understanding of, and the liberation from, the causes of human suffering. Many of humanity’s intellectual pursuits have this political nature and Marxism represents the first structural understanding of this simple fact. Seen in this light the intellectual sectarianism and inter-discipline competition we perceive today is utterly absurd.

This may seem to most people to be an unduly idealistic view of the motivation for intellectual endeavour but Marxists reject the idea that the belief in human potential is rooted in delusional ideals. We are well aware that many are motivated by greed, status and sometimes by pure curiosity alone but this is rarely the whole story of those who make the significant discoveries. To look at it another way, as said earlier, it is apparent that all disciplines are dependent on each other. How could it be otherwise since global human culture represents an integrated whole? Any attempt to compartmentalise knowledge entirely must inevitably end with error and confusion.

Marx may well have rejected the label ‘Marxism’ for the reasons outlined above. It seemed absurd to him that the interdisciplinary study of human development should be compartmentalised into a sectarian ideology bearing his name. We only use the phrase today to emphasise the contrast it represents to contemporary approaches in the study of politics. It is one of the great ironies of history that through the political ignorance of many of those who have proclaimed his name during moments of political turmoil it has become identified with absolutism and dogmatic reductionism. 

Wez

Production and class (1978)

From the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Classes are defined by their respective connections to the productive forces within a certain type of production relation, and arise as soon as it is no longer necessary for everyone to work in order to sustain society. A social division of labour has been transformed into a relation of oppression and exploitation.

Thus, history may be roughly divided into periods characterised by a predominant mode of production and, based upon it, a class structure consisting of a ruling and oppressed class. The struggle between these two classes determines the social relations between people. Further, the ruling class, which owes its position to the ownership and control of the means of production, controls in a subtler way the whole moral and intellectual life of the people. In the period of its ascendance each class is “progressive”: its economic interests are identical with technical progress and its ideas and institutions have a liberating influence. On becoming the ruling class, however, it assumes a reactionary role, resisting attempts to change social and economic organisation. The resulting tensions and conflicts lead to revolution.

This materialist concept of historical change is not to be interpreted mechanistically, however. It is mistaken to imply that only technical and economic factors are important and that the whole social, political and intellectual realm is of secondary significance. Socialist theory is a tool for political action and the materialist approach serves as a guide to the study of, and not as an excuse for ignoring, historical events.

Why do we stress the importance of the organisation of production as a determinant of social class, rather than sociological favourites such as status difference? The reason is simple. Since it is labour that makes history, an understanding of the conditions of production, of man’s struggle to provide for his subsistence, is the key to the understanding of historical change. The satisfaction of basic needs makes work a fundamental facet of human life. The more new needs that are created, the more important it is that the instruments of production are improved and that individuals co-operate socially to this end. This implies the division of labour over and above the techniques of production employed.

The experience gained in the effort of making a living foster common beliefs and actions among members of a social class. Conflict over economic reward, communication of ideas between members of a class, and common suffering (not only material) experienced in exploitation help overcome differences and conflicts between individuals and groups within a class and encourage the growth of class conscious political organisations. Under capitalism this process, arising alongside inherent and growing social contradictions, has formidable obstacles in its way: individual competition for jobs, and between employed and unemployed and, perhaps most important, habitual assumptions about the existence and automatic functioning of capital. Social relations are taken for granted and codified in laws and custom. Transactions between workers and capitalists have the appearance of freedom on both sides, of “fair” exchange. This masking of reality, of things appearing what they are not, is a basic characteristic of class society. In reality, “the wage-labourer is bound to his owner by invisible threads. The appearance of independence is maintained by a constant change in the person of the individual employer, and by the legal fiction of a contract” (Capital, 1, xiii p. 719, Penguin). He is regarded and treated as an adjunct to the productive forces.

If a worker acquires the consciousness of an exploited individual, this is of little significance unless it is part of a collective, antagonistic movement extending outside the work situation. As an individual he may resist exploitation and hence develop “trade union consciousness”, but to the point that he challenges the capitalists’ legal right to expropriate the product of his labour at all, involves the emergence of class consciousness. In that they have common economic interests, wage and salary earners are “already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle . . . this class becomes united and constitutes itself as a class for itself . . . [And this] struggle of class against class is a political struggle” (Poverty of Philosophy, p. 150, Moscow edn.).

Karl Marx did not discover the existence of classes or their historic struggle. The modern notion of class —as distinct from rank—arose in the course of the French Revolution, from an awareness that the removal of legal privileges did not in itself result in social equality. The sharpening of class antagonism by the Industrial Revolution brought to the fore an awareness of the dynamic element of class. Marx’s class concept was a fusion of historical and economic elements, of which surplus value was central. In Capital he summarised it thus: “the specific form in which unpaid labour is pumped out of the immediate producers determines the relation of domination and subjection”, which in turn constitutes “the final secret, the hidden basis of the whole construction of society, including the political patterns of sovereignty and dependence, in short of a given form of government” (Vol. 3, p. 772, Moscow edn.). The class that controls the means of production will wield effective political power.

Capitalism has largely absorbed the remnants of classes from the previous mode of production (land- owners and peasants) and polarised society into two main classes. The enormous increase in wealth production has brought about the integration of the ownership of land and capital. (Marx loosely referred to two other groups as classes: the intelligentsia — “those who make the perfecting of the illusion of the class about itself their chief sources of livelihood”— and the lumpenproletariat—“a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals”. There is no evidence to support the theory that these two groups merged in the course of struggle to give us today’s professional politicians.) Marx’s views on the increasing poverty of the working class follow logically from his class analysis of society. Contrary to common belief, he never claimed that workers would become increasingly poor in absolute terms and could not improve their living standards. His case was that the gap between worker and capitalist would widen and that any increase in workers’ standards would always go hand in hand with increased wealth for the capitalists. He makes this clear in Wage Labour and Capital:

A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside a little house, and it shrinks from a little house to a hut. The little house shows now that its owner has only very slight or no demands to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilisation, if the neighbouring palace grows to an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls.

(p. 32 Moscow edn.)

The class struggle is not a moral assertion about the inhumanity of the capitalist system. Against the background of the failure of humanist ideals and reform movements of all kinds, the last two classes in history confront each other with their needs and interests in direct opposition. The days of both are numbered.

Melvin Tenner

The Sociology of Revolutions. (1922)

From the September 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

For some years there has been a “boom" in “Sociology.” Not long ago the demand for books upon social affairs was so limited that the publication of small popular and cheap volumes of the kind which to-day and for the past few years have been so abundant was not a commercial proposition, except to publishing houses which specialised in such works. Before the war the output showed a marked increase. But that event which, overwhelming though it appeared in its day, we may now regard as a mere political episode hardly warranting, when compared with coming conflicts already hinted at by the “experts," the titles of the “ Great” War, gave a further impetus to the publication of “sociological" treatises, enquiries and text books—because as the problems of society multiply or intensify, so do the attempts to solve them.

Looking over the shelves of a public library one may find works on “Unemployment,” “Poverty,” “Taxation,” “Industrial Management,” “Trades* Unions, ” “Political Reform,” the “Structure of the State,” “Education,” One will see ponderous works and slim handbooks about “Primitive Society,” “Early Law and Custom," “Feudalism," "Mediaeval Guilds,” and the “Factory System.” All these will contain some useful information. Some will be sound in viewpoint and contents while others will be comparatively worthless. In such a collection, however, one subject of enormous importance to the student of society, both in its present and its past evolution, will be found to be practically, if not completely ignored, and that subject is the “Sociology of Revolutions.” Very few, if any, works will be devoted to the consideration of the place of social revolution in history, while those which mention the subject at all do so casually, hastily, and in an utterly unconvincing way.

Apart from the fact that “revolution” is always a delicate subject with bourgeoise writers and particularly so, to the extent of taboo, at a time when social problems are in pressing need of solution, there is a strong theoretical reason for this “peculiar omission.”

Revolutions are generally considered by the bourgeoise “sociologist" to be something apart from the normal processes of society, as disturbing, intruding factors unrelated to the conditions ordinarily determining social evolution and therefore outside the “proper scope” of their “science.”

This mistaken notion, although based fundamentally upon an unconscious bias and being, therefore, as the psychologist would say, a “rationalisation" promoted by a politico-economic “complex" is related theoretically to two of the basic ideas which form the usual stock-in-trade of bourgeoise socia; science.

The first of these is that evolution is usually, if not always, a “slow” and at any rate an uniform process. This idea is utterly unsound. The terms “slow” and “fast” are purely relative to some accepted standard of measurement when applied to evolution as to other aspects of motion. By what arbitrary standard are we to judge by comparison any evolutionary process to be slow or fast? The only general fact we know about universal evolution at all is that it shows no break in the continuous chain of cause and effect. The further notion that the rate of progression is uniform, is a pure fiction contradicted by facts from every branch of science.

The other fallacious idea which is common to orthodox writers on social science is that evolution must necessarily be governed by the same forces and take place in the same way and at the same rate in all the different branches of the social structure. This idea touches on the central problem in the study of the social revolution.

Marx was probabIy the first thinker to address himself to the solution of this problem, and in the introduction to his “Critique of Political Economy” (1859) will be found the summary of his conclusions, in which he shows what a revolution is and how it is brought about. This passage, which is given below, has become classic, and has been translated into practically every language spoken by civilised men:—

   “In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of Society—the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of. men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within which they had been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations the distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic, or philosophic—in short, idealogical forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness: on the contrary, this consciousness must rather be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the existing, conflict between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society. Therefore, mankind always takes up only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation. In broad outlines we can designate the Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeoise methods of production as so many epochs in the progress of the economic formation of society. The bourgeoise relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production—antagonistic not in the' sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from conditions surrounding the life of individuals in society; at the same time the productive forces developing, in the womb of the bourgeoise society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of the pre-historic stage of human society” (“Critique of Political Economy,” pages 11-13). 

R. W. Housley