Is Marxism dead? (2005)

From the November 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Surely before we cheer or weep over the bier of Marxism we should clearly identify the corpse. What exactly do we mean by Marxism?

Marxism is a materialist method of interpreting history; an explanation of social class and a labour theory of value. However, rather than getting involved in Marx's rather complicated theories, it is simpler to look at his vision of a proposed alternative to capitalism, which he called socialism (following Robert Owen) or communism — he and the pioneers of the socialist movement used the terms 'communism' and 'socialism' interchangeably.

Marx saw wage labour and capital as two sides of the same relation and affirmed that one could not exist without the other. He advised workers to remove from their banners the conservative slogan of a fair day's pay for a fair day's work and instead inscribe 'Abolition of the wages!' He saw the state — by its nature — as an executive committee of a ruling class and held that in socialism government of people would give way to a simple, democratic administration of things.

In other words, Marx's vision of socialism was of a social system of common ownership of the means of production, the resources of nature and the means of distribution essentially achieved by a conscious democratic process and administered necessarily by the widest possible forms of participative democracy.

It is important to emphasise — however obvious it should be — that the wageless, classless, moneyless and stateless world he envisaged could not be established by other than the conscious democratic action of a majority.

Today Left and Right are meaningless terms; each is one side of the spectrum of capitalism; and, because both accept to take on the political stewardship of capitalism, economic and political necessity frequently means they adopt each other's positions. Always when the Left gains power it creates dissidence within its own outer ranks when its aspirations clash with the requirements of the system and the capitalist ruling class.

In Britain today, 'Old Labour' — with a very short memory of old Labour governments! — bemoan the activities of Blair, Brown, Straw, Blunkett and Clarke. We should remember that most of these men were Lefties and CNDers and that none of them invented 'Blairism'. Blairism and its outcrops are simply the logical application of the illogical reformist thesis that capitalism can be made to function in the interests of the working class; a bit like saying that the slaughterhouses can function for the benefit of the cattle.

Socialism/communism has never existed anywhere, nor could it exist in just part of the world, because it is the global alternative to a decadent global system. Socialists in open debate with upholders of capitalism will shatter their arguments and throw its philosophers to the wind. But the political agents of capitalism have learnt never to attack socialism as Karl Marx envisaged ; instead they attack a perversion of Marxism which they call Marxist- Leninism — a contradiction in terms — or the limping incompetence of Left reformism in government,

Those who want to see socialism must first unequivocally delineate what they mean by the term, as all scientific practice calls for. Once this is done, it can be seen that socialism as advocated by Marx is still very much alive.